


How to Challenge a Wildling's Storm

by afterandalasia



Series: Life Built on Snow and Ashes [6]
Category: DreamWorks Dragons (Cartoon), Frozen (2013), How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Arendelle, Crossver, Dragon Riders, Elsa Has Ice Powers, Gen, Historical, Male-Female Friendship, Mental Health Issues, Minor Anna/Hans (Disney), Movie: Frozen (2013), Presumed Dead, Sister-Sister Relationship, Wildlings - Freeform, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-09-07 17:22:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 151,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8809471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: This is Arendelle. It's a little bit south of Berk, and a long way north of everywhere else. Different language, different culture, and a whole different set of secrets being kept.
    Hiccup has been visiting Arendelle for treaty signings ever since he was a child, and it's not the new Queen that he's worried about this time around. He knows the language, he knows his way around the city, and he knows the Queen herself. The only new thing about Arendelle is what Berk now knows about its history, and he's determined to go in with his eyes open and his mind clear. More than that, he's hoping that letting Elsa go back, even for a couple of days, might finally deal with some of her own demons, and see some of her fears subside. It's been years, from child to adult, and he wants her to see that Arendelle is not the place of nightmares that it might sometimes seem.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashleybenlove](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ashleybenlove).



> Is this the one that people have been waiting for? I have my suspicions. Yes, the series continues, and this time around we'll be picking up some pace into the plots. Welcome back! I didn't manage to finish the one-shot this week, so it's straight into this fic.
> 
> This fic is drawn almost completely from _Frozen_ , although some references to _Race to the Edge_ made it in and the second half picks up some of _Riders_ and _Defenders of Berk_. It should not, however, be too necessary to know the TV series to follow the story. I would recommend reading at least the first fic in the series before this one, otherwise there's quite a bit that won't make sense!
> 
> As of the beginning of posting, the fourth and fifth fics are partially drafted. I can promise completion of this WIP, and updates on a weekly (Sunday) schedule.
> 
> A note on shipping: Elsa & Hiccup is platonic only. Shipping takes a definite backseat in this fic; there's some Anna/Hans, background Gobber/Stoick when the action returns to Berk, and occasional touches of Astrid/Hiccup. Endgame ships can be seen on the [series page](http://archiveofourown.org/series/351317) \- but be warned, that way lie **spoilers**!

There were good days, and this was one of them. Several buckets of warm, soapy water, a brush, and enough fish to keep Toothless distracted. At least, Hiccup had intended to keep Toothless distracted, but it turned out that he did not need to as he set about cleaning him.

“Bet that feels better, huh, bud?” Hiccup said, grinning. He swapped out the brush for a cloth to get into the uncomfortable angle of Toothless’s armpit, and Toothless obligingly raised his front leg to help. The scales under there were finer, but were coming away just as much as anywhere else, and were probably itchier as well. At least, to judge by the rumble that ran through Toothless as Hiccup got a few of the strays, black flakes ranging from the size of his little fingernail to some two inches across.

Toothless chuffed, and tried to lick Hiccup’s face, while Hiccup fended him off with soapy hands. After getting a mouthful of bubbles, he pulled a face, tongue smacking.

“Well, that serves you right for licking me, doesn’t it, huh?”

Toothless continued pulling his faces, and Hiccup chuckled to himself. Gobber had assured him that the soap was no worse for dragons than it was for humans, but that it tasted no better either. Considering some of the things that the dragons had been known to eat, or want to eat, that was perhaps an important addition.

“Come on. Let’s get behind your flaps. I swear, every time I put my hand back there, there’s more of the blasted things…”

He rinsed the cloth out, picking stray scales off his hands for a moment then giving up and accepting that it would be better left until the end. Just as he was about to start again, though, running footsteps outside caught his attention, and the twins came bursting around the side of the house, tumbling against each other.

“Hiccup!” Ruffnut shouted. “Come quick! Barf and Belch are _dying_!”

“What?” the cloth slipped from his hands as he straightened up, looking at them in horror. Barf and Belch had been fine just the day before, when they had all been out for an evening flight. A little itchy, like all of the dragons right now, but not even ill. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh no,” said Tuffnut, throwing up an arm that stopped Ruffnut short. Horror spread across his face, then he staggered forward a few more paces and dropped to his knees in front of Toothless. “It’s got Toothless as well. Oh, Toothless.”

He flung his arms around Toothless’s neck, and began sobbing loudly. With a wail, Ruffnut threw herself down beside her brother and embraced Toothless as well, to Toothless’s obvious bewilderment. Hiccup stared at the pair of them, water still dripping from his hands.

“What are you talking about?”

“The skin,” said Tuffnut. He drew back, soapy water on his cheek, and held up one of Toothless’s scales. “The skin! They’re dying, Hiccup!”

Well, at least that explained it. Hiccup threw the cloth back into one of the buckets and swiped the scale from Tuffnut’s hand. “They’re _shedding_ , Tuff! You know, like all dragons do? Like Gobber told us about?”

It earnt him two completely blank looks. Hiccup sighed.

“When Gobber came to the academy and warned us that all of our dragons would be going through their annual shed this summer. He wasn’t sure whether Toothless was going to shed more in patches, like Zipplebacks, or individual scales like Nadders do. No? None of this ringing a bell?”

Almost in unison, the twins shook their heads. They were still kneeling with their arms around Toothless’s neck, but when Hiccup tapped the dragon on the shoulder he tugged free and backed up with a snort.

“Guys, we spent a whole morning on this, and how best to deal with it. When Gobber stood at the front of the academy, and drew us pictures and lists…?”

Tuffnut scrunched up his face. “We were supposed to be listening to that?”

“Odin, give me strength.” Hiccup almost ran his hand over his face, and only caught himself because he still had suds and scales clinging to it and did not want to be picking scales out of his hair again. Instead, he pointed back in the vague direction of the twins’ house. “Go home, get some buckets of warm water and soap ready, and I’ll ask Gobber to come round and explain to you.”

Using, he presumed, very small words.

The next thing that he knew, the twins were hugging _him_ , babbling gratitude and blessings and invoking various deities. Hiccup sighed, rode it out, and when they released him pointed firmly with one hand and spun them around with the other. They finally ran off again, already calling joyfully for Barf and Belch, and he looked back to Toothless with a shake of his head.

Toothless chirped.

“No, I have no idea. Just because I’ve known them for fifteen years doesn’t mean that I understand them.”

Snorting, Toothless proceeded to shake his head, flaps knocking against each other and water being flicked in all directions.

“Yeah. You and me both. Come on, let’s get this finished.”

 

 

 

 

 

Berk had a certain beauty, if you knew where to look for it. Of course, the Great Hall when there was a farting contest on in one corner and a belching contest in another was almost certainly not that place, but even then there was a certain... life to the place that Hiccup had come to appreciate over the years.

For now, however, he was not having to worry about such things. The sun was shining, and had been long enough for the grass to be dry enough to sit on; they had found a quiet lea for Toothless to chase grasshoppers in; and birds were singing around them. Every so often, Toothless would pause in his game to rolling on the grass, and Hiccup knew that he would need to go searching later in the day for the scales that would be left all over the place.

It had taken days for the twins to stop panicking over the shedding. Even after Gobber had reassured them again that it was something that happened every year, and then had shouted the same message with increasing frustration.

He played a couple of experimental notes on the bone flute he had been playing at making, and winced at how high-pitched they came out. He wished that he could blame it on this deer being smaller than usual, but it was almost certainly down to his botched first attempt and subsequent trimming. In the grass in front of him, Toothless perked up his head, flaps twitching as he looked around him.

“Huh.” Hiccup glanced at the flute, then blew another careful note. Toothless snorted and looked around more insistently, until Hiccup eventually gave up and started laughing.

He dropped back to rest on his elbows, as finally the Night Fury set his eyes on him and narrowed them.

“I'm sorry, bud. That was too easy. Come here,” he said, waving Toothless over.

With a huff, Toothless pushed through the long grass and butted against Hiccup's stomach, dribbling on him slightly in the process.

“Well, that is just lovely,” said Hiccup, scratching him under the chin all the same.

The fast burr of Gronckle wings made him look round to see Fishlegs coming in to land nearby. Toothless straightened up, then bounded over to say hello, whapping Hiccup with his tail along the way and not pausing for an instant even as it happened. Hiccup opted, instead, for brushing the dragon saliva off his tunic and sitting up properly, trusting it to make him visible over the grass and wildflowers.

“Why, good morning, Fishlegs,” he called. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“You do realise we're not technically in the woods, right?” said Fishlegs. He slid down out of the saddle, offered a hand to Toothless for sniffing, then carefully patted the dragon's nose.

“It's a turn of phrase, Fishlegs. Unless I learnt it in Arendelle.” He frowned. The words were definitely in Northur when he thought of them, though, which rather suggested that he had first heard them in that language.

Fishlegs laughed nervously. “Oh, right.”

The edge in his voice made Hiccup's smile fade away. Brushing dirt off his knees, Hiccup stood up. “What is it? Did my father send you to find me?”

“No, actually. It was Elsa,” said Fishlegs, wringing his hands.

At least that explained why it was Fishlegs searching, and not Astrid or even Snotlout with their much faster dragons. But it still made Hiccup's chest clench, and he reached out for Toothless instinctively, hand all but flying out as Toothless bounded over. Perhaps he sensed the tension that shot through Hiccup, the fear.

“Is she all right?” As he found his voice, he gained control of himself again, and stuffed the flute back into his pocket so that he could pick up Toothless's saddle from the ground. When Fishlegs did not answer immediately, though, Hiccup looked up again fearfully. “Fishlegs?”

“She's – she's all right,” said Fishlegs, “I think. She's in her room. I was looking for you and when nobody answered I stuck my head round the door, only she must have heard me calling for you because then she asked me to go get you.”

He let Fishlegs ramble as he quickly put Toothless's saddle and tail back into place, actually surprised that his hands were not shaking this time around. Finally, he grabbed his bag from the ground and slung it over his shoulder. “Probably about Arendelle again. _Damn_ it.”

Seeing Hiccup's movements, Fishlegs hurriedly climbed onto Meatlug's back again, but Hiccup was not particularly planning on flying at a Gronckle's pace.

“Thank you,” said Hiccup. He double-checked the connecting rod and climbed onto Toothless's back. “Really. For getting me.”

He did not wait for another response before taking to the air. The warm summer air was significantly less calm when he was pressed tight to Toothless's back and coaxing him on at the fullest speed he could get in so short a distance. It was barely any time when they flew at full speed, but enough to give him breathing room from the village, and to hopefully stop the twins from bothering him every hour or two.

They were supposed to be leaving for Arendelle the next morning. Hiccup and Elsa had discussed at length whether or not she should go with him and his father, and in the end they had agreed to go ahead as if she were going, unless she decided against it closer to the time. He had assured her that even on the boat she could change her mind, although that would mean staying down at the docks while Hiccup and the others went into the city.

The house was perfectly still and quiet, no sign that anything was amiss, and Hiccup forced himself to land calmly behind the house and walk round as if nothing was amiss and he had only come home to pick up some spare parchment. Toothless stayed even closer than usual, though, nose almost brushing Hiccup's hand with every step.

As he opened the front door of the house he could feel a chill in the air, but it was not much worse than a morning when the fire had fallen lower than usual overnight.

“Elsa?” he held the door open for Toothless along the way. “It's just me. And Toothless. Sorry it took me so long.”

Truth be told, he had absolutely no idea how long it had taken Fishlegs to find him, and knew that would have been the majority of the time. But that was not what Elsa needed to hear, and it was far from Fishlegs's fault that Hiccup had taken off for the day in search of the sort of isolation he had been so used to just a year ago.

“Are you in your room?” There was no immediate reply. “All right, I'm going to come in. Let me know if you don't want me to.”

Still nothing. A trickle of fear ran down Hiccup's spine, and he tried Elsa's door. The wood was chilled to the touch, and did not move beneath his hand.

“Elsa?”

“It's frozen,” said Elsa. Her voice was shaking, but not cracking. “The door is closed.”

“It doesn't matter. I'm still here,” Hiccup replied. Though he was still not good at finding the right words in moments like this, he was getting more confident about the voice, the balance of firm and gentle that would work out as reassuring. He rested his arm against the door as he tried to figure out what to do, wishing not for the first time that Elsa's room had some sort of window. For all that the shutters might freeze as well, it would still be something, and he wasn't sure how much of Elsa saying that she did not mind was her being polite. “Are you all right in there? You're not feeling cold or anything?”

“I am... all right,” she said, with just a hitch of a pause. “But the door, I...”

“You'll be fine. If the ice is too stubborn, we'll get an axe.” He crouched down and tried to peer under the door, in case there was a sliver of a gap there, but all that he could see was the misty blue of ice. At least Elsa had some light in there. “Is that a lantern? Can you bring it to the door?”

“I – no, it is not. I cannot. I am sorry.”

The door swung inwards. Hiccup eyed the door, then Toothless, who was sitting nearby and watching the scene curiously. “All right. Elsa,” he said calmly, “we can wait and see if the ice will melt, or I can use a bit of brute force to make my way in. Do you want to wait a while? We can still talk.”

“We can see,” said Elsa, a little more quietly than before.

“All right.” Hiccup sat down with his back to the door, waving Toothless over and getting a head in his lap for his difficulty. “This... this is Arendelle, right?”

He heard a faint scuffing on the far side of the door.

“You don't have to come. Not if you don't want to."

“I...” Elsa sighed. She sounded closer now, though her voice still had a ring about it which had to come from the ice. “I want to want to go,” she said slowly, each word deliberate. “But I do not know if I do. Is that strange?”

It was not as if he really had anything to compare it to, but given the circumstances it seemed to Hiccup like a more than understandable reaction. “No,” he said. “I get it.” The shape of it, at least, like a shadow of a person. “And that's fine, it really is. If you want to come on the boat and then just sit there and watch people pick their noses for a few days, we can do that,” he said. “Well, I need to go to the signing of the treaty, I guess, but that's only a small part of it. Or if you want to see some of the town with me, we can do that. Arendelle isn't that big, but I've been there a few times. I got lost enough that I saw some interesting places.”

He was hoping for a chuckle, but that was probably overly optimistic. It was harder to do this without being able to see Elsa's expression and body language, to know whether he was saying the right thing for her to breathe deeply or whether she was curling into herself again.

“There's, uh, there's this weapons shop that Gobber dragged me into one time. An actual weapons shop, totally separate from the smith – no forge to be seen, nothing. I think that the weapons seller does the hilts – they're fancier than the ones that we do here. It was the first time that I'd seen Arendellen swords; they're all thin and focus on the point, not the edge, it's this whole different style of fighting. And I remember one with all gold wire in the hilt, set into the leather, and gold like a sort of basket around the hand.”

He gestured with his hands, outlining the long, thin sword in the air, the way that the slender blade had tapered off and the handle had been shaped, before realising that he was not talking to another nine-year-old blacksmith's apprentice who would be fascinated by swords.

“I'm getting distracted, aren't I?” said Hiccup, cocking his head towards the door.

“It is all right,” replied Elsa. There was warmth in her voice, like a ghost of laughter. “You are interested.”

He would have preferred _interesting_ , but he'd take what he could get. “Well, there was that, and there was this butcher's with carcasses up in the window, and rabbits, and they had a pig's head. Like, a domestic pig, not the boar we have here.”

There had been domestic pigs, once upon a time, but they had made the mistake of setting them out for pannage without thinking about how few they were. Within a few years, they had bred into the wild boar population, and rather than pigs with a bit of boar, like most people had, Berk had boars with just enough pig in them to mean that they weren't scared of humans.

“And they've,” he sought for even a fraction of the ways that Arendelle was different from Berk. “They've got dogs, and cats, and they're pretty friendly actually. There's this ginger tom that lives by the docks that I've seen the last two times that I've been there.”

“I remember cats,” said Elsa. “You do not have them here.”

“Apparently they used to,” he said, with a shrug even as he realised that she could not see it. It was just impossible to not do. “But dragons and domestic animals were... difficult. Maybe now that things are different.” He ran a hand over Toothless's head, and was rewarded with a low rumble. The cat had also seemed most interested in the prospect of fish, come to think of it.

“There was a courtyard,” said Elsa. “With two fountains in it. My sister and I played chase around them. I think...” her voice faltered. “I think I froze them once.”

“I didn't see any frozen fountains when I was there,” Hiccup replied, keeping his voice light. He curled his hand into a fist, wishing that he could reach through the door to Elsa. The cold still felt as if it was seeping through the wood, and if he looked closely around the hinges he could see faint wisps of vapour. “Besides, if you did that in Berk I'm not totally sure that anyone would notice. You've see what our winters are like now.” He thought he heard a very faint chuckle. “You remember some more of Arendelle, then?”

There was so much that Elsa had forgotten; she had said that much. Memories that she had put aside deliberately, or lost to time. She had talked over the last couple of moons about trying to collect them back again, like fragments of glass long since shattered.

He could hear Elsa shift. “There were corridors,” she said. “We would skid along them in our socks... or on my ice.” This time, she did chuckle. “There was the courtyard. And cobbles. I remember seeing paintings, and my father talking about them. A woman on a white horse, with a green banner. It was my sister's favourite.

“I remember windows. Looking out through them, down streets... that is where I saw the banners.” Like the one that now hung proudly outside Gobber's shop, now doubt. Elsa sighed. “It is as if all that I remember is windows. And Anna.”

“There are worse things,” said Hiccup. He gave the door another shove, and felt it give a little, the ice creaking. “All right, Elsa, can you step away from the door? I'd make sure that you aren't behind it, either.”

“Hiccup?”

“I think this door will open now. If you, uh,” he got to his feet, and gestured for Toothless to stand. The Night Fury did so with a cock of his head. “If you back up a bit?”

He waited, holding his breath, until he was fairly certain that he heard Elsa get back to her feet. She was too quiet for him to be sure that she had moved far enough away from the door just by listening, but he trusted her. Certainly more than the twins, who would probably have their faces pressed to the wood at this point.

“All right.”

He put both hands to the wood and pushed, putting all of his weight behind it. Not that such meant a great deal, but it was the thought that counted. The door budged, but wouldn't fully open. Shaking the feeling back into his hands, he stepped away, and then waved Toothless over to right in front of the door. He made a shoving gesture towards the door with both hands.

Toothless looked at him.

“Come on, bud,” Hiccup said with a groan. “Don't play dumb with me now.” He repeated the gesture, more forcefully.

This time, Toothless seemed to catch on. He turned towards the door, narrowed his eyes, then lowered his head and butted the wood with such force that it jumped in the frame. With a glance to Hiccup, as if checking for permission, he backed up a step and then headbutted it again. This time the door was flung open with a shattering sound, the wood intact but shards of ice dropping to the floor.

Elsa was at the far end of the room, eyes wide and one hand clutched to her chest. The room around her was coated in ice, the walls covered in feathery concentric circles that radiated out from the bed, the ceiling dripping with thick icicles that looked like they had been made with candle wax. Thick frost spiked from the bed, glittered on the sheets, and clung to the hem of Elsa's skirt like fur.

For a moment, he could not help but stare. Not from fear, though, and it was Elsa's that tore him away; the ice was beautiful, and it _glowed_ , a faint blue light that permeated the room even though there was neither window nor lantern to provide it. A candle sat beside the bed, but it had been extinguished, and there was no source for the light but the magic itself.

Elsa's terror was written on her face, though. Hiccup tore his eyes away, blocked out the ice, and held out his hand to her. “Come on. Let's go sit outside. The weather's holding out.”

That was the benefit of being less than a moon past midsummer, of course. Even Berk attempted to have reasonable weather for a while, and the sunlight was a marked improvement on the dim inside of the house. As they stepped back outside, Elsa slipped her hand out of Hiccup's again and cast a worried glance behind her, but Hiccup closed the door firmly behind them.

“It'll be fine. Come on, I should practice my Malurosen."

If anything, it was his Arendellen on which he should be working, but Hiccup was determined to get a grip on the Wildling language before winter rolled around again. They knew that at least once a year the Wildlings would move close to Berk, to get a chance to raid the post-Slaughterfest stores, and this time he intended to be able to talk to them when they came. The idea of giving meat to Wildlings was still something which he needed to raise with his father, but Hiccup wanted peace on the southern front as well as on the northern.

And for that, he needed the language.

“Have you been practising?” said Elsa. It was the question that she always asked, and today at least Hiccup could give her a better answer than usual.

“Yes. _Heiva. Paakuma Marulosen. Maaneumasen Hiccup. Aan tiisaatoskouma._ How was that?” he smiled hopefully. “I mean, I'm sure my accent is terrible, but I think I'm getting the hang of it.”

Elsa looked at him and smiled, but it was sad and did not quite reach her eyes. “You are getting better.”

“See? I'll be managing economic negotiations in no time,” he said, nudging her with his elbow. She flinched, which only served to make him feel like even more of a muttonhead than he already did. In the fresh air, though, or perhaps just being away from the scene inside, the ice on the hem of her skirt was melting away. “I know, I won't need that. I just... I want to be able to say that we know that they're human. That we won't hurt them any more.”

“The people from Kiirkylla, from the village, they do not have magic. But they will have knives, and bows,” said Elsa. It was not the first time that she had said as such.

It was also not the first time that Hiccup gave his answer. “And I will be wearing armour, and Toothless will be nearby.”

“I want to go with you,” Elsa said abruptly.

It was so sudden that for a moment, Hiccup stopped in his tracks. Elsa took a couple more steps, then turned to look at him with a troubled expression and her hands held to her chest. “Pardon?” said Hiccup.

“If you are going to Kiirkylla, I want to come with you. It will be safer for you.” Taking a deep breath, Elsa reached out and took both of Hiccup's hands in hers. Her skin was cold, but not painfully so. “If you need... I can help.”

“Thank you,” said Hiccup softly. He knew that it was hard for Elsa to talk in that way about her powers, knew as well that was what she was offering. “I really appreciate it. We'll talk about that when we get closer to the time, all right?” It was too much, too abruptly, and he was not yet quite sure what he could do with the information. “Let's face Arendelle first, and then worry about Maruloet. Deal?”

She smiled weakly. “Deal.”

 

 

 

 

 

Even Hiccup would admit to being nervous as they left the wharves the next morning. Berk sent only one boat to Arendelle, but it was the best that they could muster, and there had been work throughout the spring to rebuild the most intact of their drakkars, such that it would be impossible to tell that it had ever been half-destroyed by the Red Death. A carved Monstrous Nightmare head formed the prow, the dragon looking as if it was snarling forwards from the wood, and a shining copper weathervane – bright enough to look gold, from a distance – was at the stern. It had fresh sails with rich red and golden-yellow stripes, and the uppermost boards had been brightly painted to match.

Hopefully, Arendelle would not know how lightly, for a drakkar, it was crewed. The forty men and women on board included Hiccup, and he was quite aware that were he not the chief's son he would be one of the last choices in the village. As it was, though, he stood at the stern of the boat with his father, while Toothless perched in the rigging and sniffed at the oncoming wind.

Stormfly, at least, was staying behind while Astrid came with them. It had not been possible to persuade Toothless to do the same, no matter how many fish had been offered. One of the reasons that the drakkar was so lightly-crewed was because part of the stern had been hastily cleared of benches so that there would be enough room for Toothless to curl up under blankets in it, at least during the day. They would only be in Arendelle for two nights and one full day, and Hiccup had bought the plain dark tail in the hope that they would still be able to go flying.

“You think they'll believe that we accidentally got there a day ahead of schedule?” said Hiccup, as the boat was rowed out of the bay towards the current that ran sunwise around the island.

Stoick sighed. “I think they'd believe a lot of things of backwards northern barbarians like us.”

“So it's not just me that's heard that, then,” said Hiccup. The sails began to fill out, and Stoick gestured for the rudder to be turned to steer them starboard.

“You'd be amazed how much Arendellen people don't think that you speak,” replied Stoick, but in the tone of voice which meant that he was quite aware Hiccup would not be surprised at all. “King Agnarr was a good man, treated us well. I hope that his daughter will be the same. But where he spoke Northur, some of his ministers assumed that we did not speak Arendellen.”

Most of the people coming with them did not, or only spoke a pidgin form. In return, a lot of Arendellen shopkeepers spoke a little Northur, and silver was silver in anybody's language. Although Hiccup had probably not been the best example of linguistic talent when he had first tried his hand at Arendellen, aged nine, he knew that he had been understood well enough. Just that he had been talking about everyone in the third person and past tense.

It had been less than a moon ago that they had made the decision to go to Arendelle a day early. It would give Stoick time to talk to people, to gently search for information about the Silver Priests whom Berk had avoided for so long. He had absolutely forbidden Hiccup to do the same, and Hiccup had agreed, lying through his teeth all the while. He wasn't sure whether or not his father knew that.

As the wind caught the sails, Stoick called people off the oars again, and there was a general shuffle and bustle as they were drawn in and stowed. People began to talk, no longer needing to concentrate on the sea, and turn on their benches, or even get to their feet and stretch out their muscles.

With a glance to his father to check that he was no longer needed, Hiccup picked his way down the length of the ship, stepping from bench to bench. Astrid was already leaning back against the gunwhales by the time that he drew level with her and Elsa. She gave him a playful salute as he drew near, which he firmly ignored.

“So,” he said to Elsa. “How are you finding the seafaring experience?” She frowned in that careful, polite way only she could manage. “How's the boat?”

Elsa smiled. “Not bad.”

They caught a wave roughly, rocking the boat slightly, and Hiccup staggered a step sideways. He caught himself which as much dignity as he could manage, which was not much by this point, and then sat down on the end of the bench. If it was made to hold two men of Stoick's size, then it could hold the three of them easily enough.

“Sea looks calm this year,” said Astrid. She caught Hiccup's eye, smiling with a wicked smile and bright eyes. “Hopefully no-one gets seasick.”

“I have a dragon,” he said, warningly.

“Don't we all.”

Hiccup shook his head and ignored her. He could handle travelling to and from Arendelle easily enough, but many years ago had made the mistake of complaining to Snotlout about how sick he felt when going to and from the Shivering Shores. Nowadays it was common knowledge, and the best that he could do was face it like a man. At least Astrid's teasing had no malice behind it. “Anyway,” he said. “It's pretty boring from here to Arendelle. Just let the current take us on round. Unless...” he glanced at the shoreline behind Astrid's back, trailing off, then pointed across to it. “Do those places have names? The... bays, the cliffs?”

“A few,” said Elsa. “The large bay, to the south, it is _Laahopal_.”

“Salmon Bay?” Hiccup translated the words in his head, and Elsa nodded. “And I'm guessing that they're there for migration each year? Huh.” He squirmed round so that he was sitting astride the bench, rather than twisting in his seat the entire time. “Well, I guess that gives us something to talk about between now and putting ashore this evening. When you will get to experience the marvellous fun,” he added, “of putting up full-scale Viking tents. Yours was much more manageable.”

Though much more difficult to stand up in, he would admit.

“I... look forward to it,” said Elsa.

He laughed. “I really don't know where you learn half of your Northur, but it certainly isn't from me.”

“I don't know, the sarcasm is pretty tell-tale,” said Astrid.

He went to respond, but Elsa got there first. “I don't know what you mean,” she said calmly.

After only a moment's shocked pause, Astrid started laughing, and Hiccup could not help doing the same. It looked as if this voyage was, at the very least, going to be more entertaining than previous ones.

 

 

 

 

 

They put ashore before nightfall, on a stretch of coast carefully checked for signs of Wildling activity before they started to make camp, and set guards all the same. Beside the rations they had carried, there was fish in the nets they had slung from the sides, and even in the hungry gap of July there was a reasonable meal to be put together. Though there was no loud carousing or celebrating, the mood around the campfires at night was cheery, with people shining their weapons, practising their Arendellen and swapping stories about previous years that they had visited the southern city.

The last night before they reached Arendelle, when the south-eastern peninsula that formed the home of the ice-harvesting village was visible on the horizon, Sanguina got it into her head to talk to Elsa about Arendelle. Hiccup came back from his flight with Toothless to find Elsa sitting on one of the logs around the fire between Astrid and Sanguina, one knee tucked up to her chest and her chin propped on it, expression unreadable.

Astrid, tankard of ale in hand, was looking less than impressed at whatever Lars Thorston was telling her. He was leaning forwards and gesturing enthusiastically, and whenever Astrid glanced away was giving her admiring looks. It sent a pang of annoyance through Hiccup, but he pushed it aside as he saw the glassy look in Elsa's eyes, the set of her shoulders that had an undercurrent of fear beneath it.

“Hiccup!” Astrid hailed him with her mug, and it may not have been his imagination that there was some relief in her tone. She shuffled away from Lars. “Come and take a seat.”

As guilty as he felt for doing it, he gestured between her and Elsa. “Can I...?”

Elsa smiled in a distinctly fragile way, and Hiccup barely waited for Astrid to move aside before sitting down between them. He ended up almost shoulder-to-shoulder with them both, and Toothless walked over and stuck his chin on Elsa's spare knee to look up at her adoringly.

“Evening,” said Sanguina, with a wave of the loaf of bread in one hand. “I was just talking to Elsa about Arendelle.”

For a moment, Hiccup thought that his heart had stopped in his chest. In all the past moons, only Stoick, Spitelout and Astrid had heard Elsa's full story about Arendelle, the Silver Priests, and the lies that had been told for so many years. Then he swallowed down the thought, because no, Sanguina could not know anything. “Oh?” he said, the sound only a little strangled.

“Sanguina was telling me about Arendelle,” said Elsa. She released her knee and let her foot slide to the ground, whereupon Toothless shoved his head completely into her lap and shuffled round so that he lay parallel with the bench and all but on everyone's feet. From the angle that he lay, he looked up at Hiccup with eyes huge in the darkness. “It sounds very different from Berk.”

“You've been there more often than half of us,” Sanguina said, with a nod to Hiccup. “But from what Elsa said, you hadn't told her much about Arendelle.”

“It's been a busy few moons,” he said. “We were concentrating on Berk first.” He wiped his damp palms on his leggings, then reached over to scratch Toothless on the head. “Besides, two days in Arendelle shouldn't be enough for too much cultural confusion to creep in.”

Sanguina laughed. “You say that, but last time I had a man walk into a wall when he saw me. Turned out it was because of my knees,” she added to Elsa, with a grin that Hiccup suspected was supposed to be woman-to-woman. “I don't know if they forget that women have them in Arendelle, hiding them under those long skirts, but they can be funny about things.” She went to drink from her tankard, then looked into it with a frown. “Blast. Can I get you one?”

“Oh, thank you,” said Hiccup. It would be something to occupy his hands at least, and more importantly would give him a moment to talk to Elsa. As soon as Sanguina got to her feet and headed towards the open barrel, he put his hand over Elsa's. She jumped, breath hitching. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” breathed Elsa, the word slow and soft. “I have let her talk.”

“That is one way to distract Vikings,” Hiccup said. He squeezed Elsa's fingers, then drew his hand back again, aware that Astrid had grown quiet and was looking at them both with concern. “There's hardly anyone in Berk who won't talk your ear off given half a chance.”

“That includes him,” said Astrid. Lars was trying to get her attention again, but she turned away from him completely, knees bumping against Hiccup's. “How old were we when you tried to talk to me for several hours about blacksmithing? Six?”

“Must have been at least seven,” he said. There was really no point in denying it. In a place as small as Berk, everyone always knew everyone else's business, and with six of them all the same age they had been a larger-than-usual age group trying to find their way around each other.

Astrid smiled and nudged his leg. “Might have worked if you'd stuck to the swords, and not started talking about charcoal.”

“You seriously remember that?”

Over the years, he had turned the conversation over in his head on plenty of occasions, wishing that he had not been quite so socially inept. Of course, ineptitude was subjective thing when the twins still went for bashing each other on the head in lieu of actually talking, but it had been his first real attempt to make friends with Astrid and had really set the standard for their later interactions. Losing track of himself, Hiccup had put his hand straight into a fire and burnt himself so badly that the skin on his palm had peeled. At least it had been his right hand.

Astrid smiled. “You weren't that bad when we were kids. It was before you started doing anything particularly stupid.”

“Thank you for your vote of confidence,” said Hiccup. Sanguina passed him a tankard as she returned, and he looked at it blankly for a moment before remembering that he had indeed asked her for one. “Oh, thanks. Say, Sanguina, how's your Arendellen?”

She shrugged. “I prefer to just look around. Have you seen what they call a shield there?”

“We don't all use greatshields, you know,” said Hiccup. “And Arendelle has never had problems with dragons.”

“Yeah, but that does mean they didn't get our opportunity to toughen up,” Astrid said. She winked at Sanguina, but pressed her shoulder against Hiccup's and let her eyes flicker to his. It had surprised him what a grasp of discretion she could have, when it came to important things. It was not a particularly Viking trait. “Right?”

“I'd choose the dragons any day,” said Hiccup, running his hand down and over Toothless's flaps. “Besides, a good warm dragon makes up for the cold.”

Toothless huffed in his general direction, and Hiccup wafted a hand in front of his face.

“Although you do have to put up with the dragon breath to get there.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Arendelle! This chapter is a momentary breath, and has a lot of worldbuilding.
> 
> I've changed some of the backstory with 'Joan', here. In order to move away from the more real-world setting of _Frozen_ , she's not Joan of Arc as seen in _Do You Want to Build a Snowman?_ , but there remains a warrior Joan in Arendelle's history. I'll let Hiccup deal with the explaining, though!
> 
> Hamish the First and Hamish the Second appear in the TV series, in the episode _Portrait of Hiccup as a Buff Man_. (Yes, that really is the title!)

They broke camp at first light, which in summer was always atrociously early, and Hiccup had to change clothes after helping so that he would have a chance of looking fit to be seen when they reached Arendelle. The linen shirt felt too light on his skin, and the plain leather vest from his birthday did not feel right without Toothless’s form on the back. He had not even needed to ask Stoick whether he could get away with that, though.

Freshly scrubbed and dressed, he helped to get Toothless settled beneath the blankets towards the stern of the ship, and concentrated on staying clean and dry as the ship set off around the last promontory. A beacon was lit high on the cliffs above them, doubtless the work of the ice harvester community who considered themselves independent, but whom Arendelle claimed as theirs. Hiccup looked through his spyglass to see figures looking down at them from the clifftop, but none of them looked to be wearing armour and were probably not Arendelle’s men.

It was late morning as they came into view of the Bay of Arendelle, the towers that flanked it shining pale green in the sunlight. The towers were a comparatively new thing, Hiccup knew, built in his father’s lifetime, and had made Arendelle even more easily defended than it had been before. Arendelle Castle was on the western side of the bay, all green rooves and smooth walls, while the centre of the city was dominated by the Temple of the Four Altars, each dedicated to one of the gods of the Silver Priests, giving way to the cargo docks and warehouses on the eastern flank. Stoick’s ship, being that of an important visitor, had permission to use the western docks closer to the castle.

As they passed between the towers, Hiccup saw men at their peaks, running to indicate with banners that the Vikings from the north had arrived a day early. It would catch people by surprise, and that was good, because Hiccup knew that both he and his father had things which they wanted to do.

Stoick was standing towards the prow of the ship, making sure that he was clearly visible from the docks should someone care to look – whatever else could be said about his father, Hiccup had to admit that he made an imposing figure. The spyglass he held looked like a toy in his hand, but his expression was quite serious as he scanned the other ships docked there. Hiccup picked his way to the front as people hurried around, using oars and sails both to guide them into dock.

“Dad? Is everything all right?” said Hiccup, as he saw his father’s shoulders tighten and his jaw clench.

“No,” Stoick replied flatly. “That ship. It’s flying Weselton’s flag.”

“What?” Ripping the spyglass from his father’s grip, Hiccup looked through to see the ship himself, with the unmistakable flag of Weselton flying from it. It was a southern ship, of course, bulkier and slower, with significantly deeper draft but capable of longer stretches of time at sea. “Oh, Thor…”

“We’ll see what is meant by this,” said Stoick, scowl etching into his features. “I’ll talk to the others, make sure that they don’t go out of their way to seek out the Weselton soldiers. If we’re lucky, they’re leaving today, and this is only because we’re a day early.”

It did not change that Hiccup was astonished to think that Arendelle would even have arranged for Weselton to visit so close in time to the Berk treaty signing, but if they had not been meant to meet then it did at least make a little more sense. “Don’t worry, Dad,” he said. “I won’t be going looking for Weselton.”

He had bigger fish to fry, after all.

 

 

 

 

 

Stoick’s talk with everyone regarding Weselton was muted, almost surreptitious, and he made sure to include even Astrid and Elsa despite the fact that Astrid had also not been born when the conflict with Weselton occurred and Elsa’s brow furrowed in confusion at the warning. Then it was a matter of explaining to the sergeant in charge of the docks – who spoke in almost embarrassingly simple sentences when he was addressing Stoick and Phlegma, while they pretended not to notice – that the winds had been unexpectedly good and that was why they were a day early.

“Very well,” said the sergeant finally, after backing out of earshot to consult with the man who must have been his second-in-command. “You may enter the city. The Queen and her ministers will be made aware of your presence, and if they wish to speak to you before tomorrow noon a message will be returned. While you are in Arendelle, you may not carry a weapon more than eight inches in length.”

He held up his hands to demonstrate, in case Stoick did not know what eight inches were. Ignoring the motion, Stoick put his hand to his battleaxe, placidly engaged expression slipping to a frown. “This axe has been passed down from Chief to Chief,” he said. “I will not leave the ship without it. The former King, may he rest in peace, always agreed to that. Surely you remember,” he added, eyes fixed on the sergeant’s.

Whether Stoick actually recognised the man, or just guessed correctly how long he had been serving, the sergeant flushed. “Very well,” he said curtly. “The Chief alone may bear larger weapons, but you will need to be accompanied by one of my men. Otherwise our citizens may attempt to report you to our force for carrying a larger weapon.”

The frown disappeared in an instant, and Stoick smiled as if the sergeant had just smoothed away an enormous difficulty and not just a small disagreement. “Of course. One moment, please.” He turned back to the ship and raised his voice, switching back to Northur. “No weapons over eight inches. Knives only.”

Astrid looked personally offended, but even Hiccup set about unbuckling the shortsword which his father had requested that he wear. Three years ago, there had not been this rule.

“Might be because of Weselton,” he said to her. “Or could just be they’re getting more strict.”

“You must return to your ship by nightfall,” said the sergeant to Stoick, over the not-inconsiderable clatter of several dozen Vikings removing their weaponry. “There is a curfew in place.”

Just for them, or for everyone? Hiccup did not look up, or give any sign that he had understood, until his father turned and translated to the crew. There was some grumbling and complaints, until Sanguina commented that it probably made the inns boring anyway, at which point some sniggering broke out. Judging by the uncertainty on the sergeant’s face, he did not speak enough Northur to be following what was being said. Well, at least that explained some of the discomfort.

With that, however, they were finally allowed to disembark, and while Hiccup was the second to make it onto dry land, he made sure that Elsa was third.

Her nervousness had grown again as they had passed into the bay, until he would have sworn she was looking green around the gills, but her ice had not made itself known and she had not expressed desire to remain on board the ship. Although her clothes were Berk-made, she still looked unusual among them, her slighter build and white-blonde hair standing out as much as the lack of armour. For the sake of looking more Berkian for the visit, she was wearing sturdier boots, and leggings beneath a skirt that only just came beneath her knees in dark green wool. Her white linen shirt was second-hand, formerly Hiccup’s, and looking a little more cream and more worn about the elbows than his, but she had reluctantly shortened the sleeves and accepted bracers for her lower arms instead, trollwort bracelets tucked slightly awkwardly beneath them. The thing that looked most unusual, though, to Hiccup’s eyes at least, was the blue shell brooch that she wore at her throat. Since trading with Johann for it in the spring, she had rarely worn it, but now it sat at the base of her throat, holding together the two sides of the neck of her shirt in place of the lacing which would usually sit there.

Still, Hiccup supposed, they had agreed on the same story as Dagur had been told – less the part about being married. Since the death of the Red Death, the seas had opened, and Elsa was from a more westerly island. It explained her accent, her more careful Northur, and her slightly unusual manner of dress.

“At least sunset will be late tonight,” said Hiccup, standing aside as most of the rest of the crew disembarked. A handful would stay behind, just in case. “That gives us plenty of time.”

Astrid was still frowning as she joined them. “No _axes_ ,” she growled. “What are they afraid of?”

“Any number of things, but mostly forty-odd armed Vikings running unsupervised around their streets.”

“Or forty odd, armed Vikings,” said Astrid. She sighed, and adjusted her belt. “And I made sure to polish it as well.”

“Well, the plan is to not need it,” Hiccup said. “Come on, we’ve got freedom to roam.” He looked to Elsa. “Are you ready?”

“I think so,” she said, head held high but voice weak.

He reached out to touch her elbow gently, and she jumped before realising that it was him and giving a faint smile. “Let’s go see all the places that I’ve made a fool of myself,” he said.

That got a laugh from Astrid, at least, and Hiccup set off. He made sure to position himself on one side of Elsa, with Astrid on the other, though he was not sure whether Astrid was quite so aware of that.

“The west side of the city stays pretty quiet,” he said, as they parted ways from the rest of the group. From by the ship, Stoick looked up to take note of where they were going, but simply nodded. “But the buildings are nice. This was the first part of the city to be settled, the best part of two hundred years ago now, but during the reign of Queen Joan a lot got rebuilt, so parts of the central city are actually older.”

“And he’s off,” muttered Astrid, possibly to herself. Elsa, on the other hand, was looking interested, and Hiccup supposed that pressing on might work out.

“Berk was actually founded first,” he said, as they made their way down one of the streets and past an impressive set of walls surrounding what was probably an impressive garden, to judge by the glimpse visible through the iron bars of the gates. “But because the population stayed small, and the Wildlands were so dangerous – not to mention the Northern Swamp, which cuts off our south-west movement – we never really looked to take over much of the island. When _Arendelle_ was founded, however, King Erik had his men sail all around the island, which was how they found Berk. And, Vikings being Vikings…”

He waved his hand vaguely. It was a fact of life when looking at Viking history that whenever two groups met, the first thing that they did was start a war with each other. Stoick said that it was born out of protectiveness, a desire to keep safe your home and family and people, the bonds of brothers-in-arms coming to the fore.

Sometimes Hiccup thought that pigheadishness had rather a lot to do with it as well.

“The fighting was still going when his son King Erik the Second came to the throne, and he tried the same tactics as his father, with about the same success. Oh, that fountain?” he pointed to a copper fountain, now turned verdigris-green, of a mermaid with trailing seaweed in her hair. “I fell in that when I was nine. Good thing it’s summer when we visit.”

“If it were winter, you would have bounced off,” said Astrid. “If you didn’t break it, I suppose.”

He chose to ignore that. “Only the new King dies, and _his_ son is only a child, and really I can see why Hamish the Second thought that we were going to win, but the King’s sister takes up arms instead. Probably shouldn’t have surprised us as much as it did,” he admitted, with a glance over at Astrid, “but we were pretty used to Arendellen women not getting involved.”

Astrid pushed back her fringe and smiled. “I like the sound of Queen Joan.”

“Yeah, she kind of gave Berk a beating. Hamish the Second made peace with her, and we basically kept to our own ends of the island since. What is it?” he added, seeing Elsa cock her head thoughtfully.

“I think… I remember the name Joan.”

It was another of those names that was popular in Arendelle, but then again Hiccup was pretty sure that everyone knew the story of how Queen Joan had made peace with the barbarians from the north, turning the tide of battle so that it was tipping in Arendelle’s favour when Hamish the Second looked to make peace.

“There’s a statue of her in the centre of the city,” said Hiccup. “We could go visit it, if you want?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Elsa nodded. She was fiddling with her bracers, but had commented when putting them on that they felt strange to her. Astrid had replied that you got used to them in time.

“There are more shops in the centre of the town as well,” he said. He was going to withhold that the Temple was there as well, but the streets would get busier. “There might well be Silver Priests there.”

Elsa’s head snapped up, hands tightening into fists.

“It’ll be all right,” said Hiccup quickly. “It’s been eleven years, they won’t recognise you. They won’t even see you. They’ll just see three Vikings out for a walk, and maybe wonder if they’ve got the day wrong.”

“You are sure?” Her voice was still thin, but steady, and only the way that her hands shook gave much away. While Hiccup had been cursing over his change of clothes that morning, Astrid had braided Elsa’s hair into some sort of circlet, and it seemed like not a curl had come loose.

“We can avoid using your name, if you want,” he offered. “Just to be sure.”

Elsa nodded, setting her lips into a line and squaring her shoulders as if preparing to take a weight on them.

“So, uh,” Hiccup said, as they continued on down the road.

“Queen Joan,” prompted Astrid.

“Oh, right, yes. Queen Joan was pretty young when she took charge herself. She never actually claimed to be Queen, just regent for her nephew, but she was so successful and I guess that having no children of her own stopped her Ministers from being too afraid of her. When her nephew was twenty-one she handed over control to him – that’s where the age of adulthood here comes from, why it’s so late – and he made her High General of his army.”

“They say that her armour is still in the Castle,” said Astrid. A slight wistful tone in her voice gave way to excitement, and increasing gesturing with her hands. “And her sword and shield. On her fiftieth birthday, she led a battle against the Berserkers and killed over a hundred of them, until the hilt of her sword was stained from white to red. The leather never rotted, and never lost the colour.”

“The armour is there,” said Hiccup, who had seen it. He couldn’t comment on the sword hilt, though. “And she was one of the only Arendellens ever to fight a dragon. A Leviathan, which she had a ship lure to an island where she fought it in the surf.” About that, Hiccup had more mixed feelings these days. Berk as a whole knew so much more about dragons – but he had looked as well into the huge mouth of the Red Death, that yawning blackness fit to swallow a person and all memories of them, and had to admire Queen Joan for standing in front of one alone and without a dragon at her side.

“In case you haven’t guessed, she’s something of a hero around here,” said Astrid. “The main street is even called Queen Joan’s Road.”

And she was the princess’s favourite figure. When Princess Anna had found out that Hiccup was descended from the Hamishes, she had immediately and excitedly declared him to be Hamish the Second during their games around the castle, while she of course had been Queen Joan.

“What happened to her?” said Elsa, one hand wrapped across herself.

“In her last battle, she took an injury that turned to a fever,” said Hiccup. He seemed to remember reading in one book that it was a stomach wound, a terrible way to die, but he could not be certain and such a detail was too morbid anyway. “She was nearly sixty, I think.”

“Not bad, forty years on the battlefield.” Astrid sounded impressed.

Hiccup had never been sure whether or not he had felt bad for Queen Joan, and a life spent around nothing but war and death, even with the ultimate hope of betterment and peace. But he was more interested in Elsa’s reaction, her eyes fixed on the distant houses as if searching for something in them. He wondered what bits of shattered glass she might find here.

“It’s not going to be market day, unfortunately,” he said. Stoick had one of the Arendellen calendars, and they had sat together to work out which day of the Arendellen week they would arrive on. “But there will be hawkers down by the docks as well. They have different bread here, it’s worth trying.”

Elsa frowned at him, and Astrid skipped even the veneer of politeness and looked completely bewildered, mouthing ‘What?’ over the top of Elsa’s head.

“Sorry. Mental jump,” he said, with a circling motion with one hand. “It shouldn’t be too busy round the statue. Or anywhere, really. And there are more Silver Priests out on market day, because they send the acolytes to get supplies for them. I guess priests have to eat as much as anyone else.”

“How do you know all this?” said Elsa. There was something very piercing in her gaze, older than the rest of her. “You said you have been here three times before.”

“Each visit was at least a couple of days, with the tides,” he said, with a shrug. “And I notice things.”

Astrid stepped behind Elsa to punch Hiccup in the arm, hard enough to send him staggering sideways. “Don’t claim all the credit. I know where you learnt some of that.”

“All right, all right,” he sighed. “The princess told me some of it as well. I guess you see patterns in things from the castle. Higher up, clearer views.”

At his admission, Astrid smirked, but Elsa’s response was to look up towards the steeply-pointed rooves of the houses. The weather in Arendelle might have been slightly more forgiving than in Berk, but they could still get bad rain and snow, and it showed in the rooves of the buildings.

“The statue,” said Elsa abruptly, dragging the conversation back and leaving Hiccup grasping after it. “What does it look like?”

“It’s, uh, marble, I think,” he replied. That was not something that Princess Anna had ever commented on. “Queen Joan on horseback, wearing her armour – no helmet, though I’m pretty sure she was smart enough to wear one in real life–”

“Probably wouldn’t have made it to sixty if she hadn’t,” said Astrid.

“–and they’ve given her some sort of banner, which she probably didn’t carry either. But from the portraits I saw around the castle, it’s a pretty good likeness, and they gave her a sword in her other hand. It’s the only statue of a woman in Arendelle, unless they’ve got some in the temple.”

They turned another corner, and Hiccup realised that he was no longer the one leading them. Although they were still walking three abreast, it was Elsa who was directing their steps, her eyes sad and distant but her expression and her posture calm. This was not the route that Hiccup had been intending on taking; he knew a shortcut, a cut between two houses where the rooves actually met over the top and created a covered alley. Good to know about when it was raining, as well.

Another turn bought them in front of the statue which he had been describing. And yes, it was just as Hiccup remembered, Queen Joan on her horse with banner, sword and flowing hair. She stood at one end of a square which was really more of a rectangle, with the smaller daily market around her and then a large clear stretch to the walls of the Silver Temple at the far end. Its roof shone almost blindingly in the noon sun, but Elsa was not paying attention to it, or shading her eyes. Her gaze was fixed on the statue.

Behind her, Hiccup exchanged a glance with Astrid; she looked as concerned as he felt. “Are you all right?” he said to Elsa.

“I have seen her before now,” said Elsa softly. “I think… I remember her.”

“She was the founder of Arendelle more than either of the King Eriks, really,” said Hiccup. He wasn’t sure how widely her story was taught, but he had his suspicions. “She was the beginning of Arendelle.”

Elsa remained silent, her eyes on the statue. There were a scattering of Arendellens in the square, trading or talking, but beyond a curious glance nobody was really paying attention to the Vikings standing at the feet of the statue. Probably thought them gawking northerners, at worst. A small child, holding his mother’s hand, pointed at them, but his mother hushed him and continued on. Normal behaviour, then, thought Hiccup. He was fine with that.

His eyes slid to the silver-rooved temple once again. His father had always spoken of the Silver Priests dismissively, at least before learning about Elsa. Now Hiccup’s curiosity was building, and he had never been particularly good at holding that back.

“Here,” he said, untying the money-pouch at his belt and handing it to Astrid. “Middle of the day, there’s these stalls, and shops as well. How about you guys have a look around, and I’ll find you?”

“Find us?” said Astrid, looking at him pointedly. “Arendelle’s a bit bigger than Berk.”

“Get hold of an axe, and I’ll follow the sounds of terror,” he suggested. She rolled her eyes. “Seriously, I said to my father I’d check something out, and it’s going to be both all in Arendellen and probably boring. I’ll find you later, all right?”

“Go on,” Astrid said, waving him off. “Go… chief.”

Technically, that one was a complete lie, but perhaps it had enough of the truth about it. Or perhaps Astrid had just given up trying to keep him from doing stupid things. Either was possible at this point.

 

 

 

 

 

As Astrid turned to Elsa to make plans, Hiccup slipped away from them and along the square. It was paved with small, neat cobbles, worn smooth with use, and the people thinned out as he drew closer to the Silver Temple.

The Temple itself was a large, square-ish structure, set at the top of a low hill and with walls high enough to hide pretty much everything inside. The walls were whitewashed, and he could see two young men – acolytes or servants, he supposed – with buckets of water and brushes cleaning splashes of mud from the foot of the wall some way off to his left.

Hiccup stopped as if looking over the wall, but more of his attention was on the young men, one of them shaven-headed and the other with long hair pulled and tied back. They were talking to each other in what looked like a friendly way as they scrubbed a patch of mud away, one with muddier water and then the second with cleaner, before shouldering the brooms, picking up the buckets and moving further away.

He really didn’t know much about the Silver Priests. It hadn’t been the sort of thing that he and the Princess had spoken about, being totally uninteresting to children of their age, and they had just been a sort of grey-robed presence in the corner of his eye when he was exploring the city. There was supposed to be a high-ranking one who was an advisor to the King – or, now, the Queen – but Hiccup had never seen them. Once, Stoick had muttered something about one of the Silver Priests trying to extol their gods to him, but he had been roundly unimpressed. Berk already had its gods.

Still scanning over the white walls, he continued round in a clockwise sort of direction. This close to the wall, the roof was mercifully less visible, though he could still see the highest ridges. More prominent was the tower that pierced upwards, walls pale grey rather than white, with a small, flat roof. It was the tallest part of the city, taller even than the castle; the castle, in turn, was the only other part of the city tall enough, and positioned just right, to see into the walls.

Hiccup wished that he had paid more attention when he and Princess Anna had run around the castle pretending to be their own forebears. Perhaps this time, he would be able to sneak up to one of the higher floors and use his spyglass to get a better view.

The houses thinned out as he turned a corner and started to walk along the western Temple wall. All that stood further north than the temple was the City Wall, and beyond that the open land that led to the gorge that separated Arendelle from the Wildlands. The gorge cut three-quarters of the way across the southern part of the island, and was the reason that Berk had believed what Arendelle had said about not being much affected by Wildling attacks. With one bridge, to be raised and lowered only as Arendelle saw fit, and the land south of it kept clear of trees, it made a good barrier. The land to the east, where the gorge did not protect Arendelle, still had the river, and was guarded both by Arendelle’s men and by the ice harvesters that lived there.

Had it really been that simple, or had he just been too young to see the cracks in the picture? Hiccup stood looking north to the town wall, arms folded across his chest. This year, he would be talking to Queen Anna adult-to-adult, and whatever Stoick said he would be asking questions about the Silver Priests and what they did.

Four trials, Elsa had said. He wondered if it had anything to do with the Silver Priests’ four gods.

“Hey, mister,” said someone behind him. Hiccup turned to see a boy, maybe five or six, looking at him curiously. “Are you a Vikings?”

“I’m from Berk, yes,” said Hiccup.

The boy looked him over. “You don’t look like a Vikings. ‘Cept your clothes.”

“Well, you never know,” he said. “I could be in disguise.”

Judging by how unimpressed the boy looked, as he reached up to pick his nose, it was not a particularly good one. “Why you in Arendelle?”

“There’s a treaty being signed,” said Hiccup. “So Berk and Arendelle don’t fight each other.”

As far as Hiccup could tell, the answer was accepted. The boy examined whatever it was he had excavated from his nose, then flicked it away.

“Say,” said Hiccup. There were reasons that children tended to get kept away from visiting dignitaries. “You know the Silver Priests, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you see those men cleaning the wall? Who were they?”

“They’re ‘colytes,” said the boy, which Hiccup presumed meant acolytes. He had come across the world once, many years ago now. “They do the cleaning and stuff around the temple. Come out to buy food. You’ve got a funny accent.”

“If you spoke Northur, you’d have a funny accent,” he retorted. Then it occurred to him that he was getting into an argument with a kid, and reigned himself in again. “You ever see the Priests themselves? In the gr – silver robes?”

“’Snot _real_ silver,” the boy said, ignoring Hiccup’s response. “They don’t come out much. Only on Holy Days. Then they talk at us all about the gods and how we need to keep balance ‘tween them. Have you got gods on Berk?”

“Sure, we’ve got plenty of them.” Talking to kids was significantly harder when you didn’t have a dragon to help drive the conversation.

“The Priests say you’re godless heathens,” the boy said, with the firm conviction of someone who had heard the phrase a number of times.

“I’m sure they’ve said worse, as well. Do they say that about people in Arendelle sometimes, as well?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “But that’s just ‘cos they’re sick. They take them to the sickhouse till they get better. You got any money?”

“Huh,” said Hiccup. That was actually interesting information. An adult probably wouldn’t have been so frank with him, either. He had given his money to Astrid, otherwise he would have given the boy a coin or two for the information – if nothing else, he now knew to ask Queen Anna what a ‘sickhouse’ was – and he didn’t really have anything else that he could offer as payment. “Hey, do you know any Viking swearwords?”

The boy shook his head.

Well, swearing could be a form of currency as well, when it came to children. “Uh, do you want to?”

 

 

 

 

 

A few swear words later, Hiccup continued his way around the wall, looking for anything that might catch his attention. There was a small door on the northern wall, which opened onto a small alley that joined up to the larger road that traced all of the way around the inside of the Arendelle City Walls. As he wandered down the alley, not having to act too much to play the role of the lost visitor, he saw an older woman, in clean but patched clothes and her head covered, knock on the door and exchange words with someone inside before being allowed entrance.

The door was closed again by the time that he got there, and he was not going to draw attention to himself by knocking and acting curious. When he was younger, he probably could have got away with it, but not so much nowadays. Child by Arendellen laws or no. Instead he continued on, following the plain walls round again, and even when he was in quieter areas with no residents around he could not hear anything from inside the walls.

All told, it was pretty unremarkable. Hiccup nodded a greeting to the two young men with the buckets as he passed them half way down the eastern wall, and they nodded and waved politely enough in response, with grunts that were communication without actually bothering to use language.

Nothing weird. It was not as if Hiccup was expecting to hear screaming victims or ominous chanting or anything, but it would have at least been a clue.

Perhaps come nightfall, he and Toothless could take a high flight over the city. Stoick would probably object to that, though.

It was so very closed off, though. It hadn’t struck him before that the Silver Priests closed themselves away behind a wall – after all, the King and Queen and Princess did the same thing, although it was widely known that was a response to their older daughter being kidnapped. In Berk they did not have a temple or Priests; the gods were everyone’s, and everyone belonged to the gods.

He turned it over in his head as he made his way back through the square once again. Definitely needed to make it to the upper floors in the castle.

There was no sign of Elsa’s white-blonde hair, nor the sort of gap that always tended to develop around Vikings in Arendelle. There were only a couple of streets branching off here that had shops, however, and Astrid had not been to Arendelle before; they would not have struck off for the main shopping street or for the markets by the docks.

He took a few quick steps away from a pair of Arendelle Royal Guards in their smart, dark-green coats and white gloves. They might or might not know what the son of Berk’s chief looked like, but he didn’t want to take any risks by making a nuisance of himself. The first time he came to Arendelle, the guards had worn tall green hats, but nowadays they had helmets instead, and their swords were placed a little more conspicuously. Or was that just him being more aware again? It was hard to tell sometimes.

The most important thing for now, though, was catching up with Astrid and Elsa again. He had seen enough about the Silver Priests to suspect that it was not going to be an easy task to find out more about them. He had to focus on Elsa. Perhaps tell her how impressed he was that she was doing this well.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah/Enjoyable other midwinter celebration of your choice!
> 
> I swear I didn't plan for this chapter to be the one that went up on Christmas. In any case, we're about to meet the last two of the main four Frozen characters.
> 
> *Samuel L Jackson voice* Hang onto your butts.

Where he was most likely to find Astrid and Elsa, Hiccup supposed, depended on who was in charge of leading them. If it was Astrid, then there was a weapons shop not all that far away that, while specialising in rapiers and blades and far outstripping the money that he had handed over, did display its wares in the window and would certainly interest her. If it was Elsa, it was harder to say, but from the smell in the air there was a baker nearby and if there was one thing that Elsa was consistent about, it was food.

He liked Arendelle, despite everything that he had learnt. The people here had occasionally been a little wary of him as a Viking, but they had always seemed decent people, just trying to make a living, in a world that was a little different from Berk but far from unrecognisable. And he wanted to like the people still, but there was a nagging whisper in his mind, which made him want to scan the face of each passerby and wonder _if they knew_. Knew that children were banished to the Wildlands, or faced these other ‘Trials’ of the Silver Priests.

The fear that Elsa had shown, that people would turn on her, meant that the Silver Priests’ fear and hatred of magic had not been kept a secret. It had been spread and nurtured among people.

And then kept a secret from their neighbours to the north, who had no more reason to like magic than Arendelle itself.

He did not feel threatened here, though, at least for now, and he was sure that Elsa was safe so long as she stayed calm. With the treaty being signed tomorrow, nobody would look twice at Vikings in the street, unless it was to notice that these two in question were attractive young women. But then again, Arendelle had different standards for that, as well.

Deciding on the bakery, Hiccup turned down one of the streets of shops, dodging a runaway chicken and its shouting, frustrated owner as they barrelled down the middle of the road. Some things didn’t change, no matter where you were.

The first stretch of the street was narrowed by wide tables of fabrics, the woman selling them bellowing with a voice so powerful that even Stoick would probably be impressed. Hiccup squeezed between two people to get past, stepped around a dog, and promptly bumped into someone.

Well, to be more precise, _someone_ bumped into _him_ , almost knocking him over before catching him again and tugging on his arm.

“Oh, I am so, so sorry!” said a woman, in Arendellen. Hiccup was hauled back upright again. “Are you all right? I wasn’t watching where I was going, there’s just so much to – Hiccup?”

He looked round, and for a second or two simply gawked in amazement before actually finding his tongue. “Anna? Princess – I mean,” he caught himself, and bowed. “Your Majesty.”

Queen Anna of Arendelle crinkled her nose. “That sounds so weird coming from you. Come on, quick!”

She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him off into a side street. It was follow or be dragged, so Hiccup went for the marginally more dignified option and hurried after her. “What are you doing?” he said. It was clearly Queen Anna to whom he was speaking, but what she was doing out in the city he had no idea.

“It’s my first time out of the castle in ten years, I’m not going to spend it with people bowing and ‘your majesty’-ing at me all the time,” said Anna. Once they were clear of people, she released Hiccup’s hand and turned to face him again. “I didn’t think you got here until tomorrow!”

“Oh, yeah. Winds were good,” Hiccup said. “So we were a day early. Thought that I’d see the market. You…”

“Finally got out of the castle,” she said. She had been grinning all the way through, eyes lit up with joy. “Isn’t it exciting? I just want to see everything for real, for a chance.”

“But how–”

“Your Majesty!” One of the Royal Guards, relief written all over his face, appeared at the corner behind Anna. He was quickly followed by a red-haired man in a grey coat, who ran straight over and took Anna by the shoulders.

“Anna! I was so worried!” he glanced over at Hiccup, and frowned slightly. “Who are you?”

“Hans,” said Anna, slipping one arm free so that she could wave to Hiccup. “This is Hiccup. He’s the Chief’s son, from Berk. I’ve known him since I was, like, down here somewhere,” she gestured at vaguely thigh-height, then gave the man a glowing smile. “Hiccup, this is Hans. My fiancé.”

“Fi...” he looked between them, slightly slack jawed and definitely lost for words, then reminded himself that this was a conversation in which he was supposed to take part. “Oh, well, congratulations! I didn’t know you were…” he gestured.

Slipping her arm through Hans’s, Anna beamed. “Well, we’re not really telling people yet.”

“Yes,” said Hans. He was smiling, but it didn’t reach his voice as he put his hand over Anna’s. “Are you sure that we should be telling him, Anna?”

“Psh,” said Anna. She waved a hand, nearly clipping Hans around the nose as she did so and not really noticing. “It’s fine, it’s just Hiccup. Say,” she switched over to Northur. “We could talk in Northur, if that would be more private.”

“Well, it’s not widely spoken around here,” said Hiccup, joining her in the language.

“I’m trying to teach Hans,” said Anna, with a squeeze of her fiancé’s arm. “But he’s so busy, you know? And they don’t really use Northur in the Southern Isles.”

“Oh, he’s from the Southern Isles?” said Hiccup. He had never met somebody from there before, and he scanned over Hans’s clothing in a glance. It did not look any different to Arendellen, or perhaps Hans had been here long enough to go native. They had not met three years ago, but that did not mean that Hans had not been here. He looked some years older than Anna or Hiccup.

Anna nodded. “Thirteenth prince. Obviously, thirteen is now my lucky number.”

“Anna,” said Hans in Arendellen, “what are you talking about?”

“Lucky numbers,” she said, off-hand, leaving him looking confused as she dropped back into Northur again. “You’ve got so tall! I swear you were shorter than me last time you were here.”

“You know, I keep getting told that, but honestly I think there’s some giant blood in Berk,” said Hiccup. “It would explain my father, for a start.”

Anna laughed, and Hans looked over to the Royal Guard keeping a studiously straight face beside them. She was probably still an inch or two taller than Hiccup, and had definitely filled out into adulthood, wearing a green dress with a fitted bodice, off-the-shoulder sleeves and a panelled skirt. The neckline dipped in just the same way as Elsa’s dress for Snoggletog had done. It was particularly strange not seeing her hair in pigtails, as they had been every time that Hiccup had seen her before. “That would make for such a great story,” she said.

“You look good,” said Hiccup. He had not known what to expect after the last three years – years in which she had lost both her parents and become Queen at such a very young age – but Anna was smiling and almost bouncing on the balls of her feet in excitement. “Is this, is you in the market a regular thing?”

“First time,” she replied, with a definite bounce in place that tugged on Hans’s arm. His look of polite confusion was starting to harden into irritation, and he cleared his throat pointedly but she did not seem to notice. “I’m hoping to do this more often, though. There are so many _people_!” she said, wide-eyed.

This time, Hiccup could not help but laugh as well. Arendelle was a lot bigger than Berk, but he had seen the weekly market days and they could get a lot bigger than this. “Well, my father always says that a chief has to look after his people. I guess that works for Kings and Queens, as well.”

“I’m very sorry,” said Hans finally, in tight Arendellen and with a very careful smile on his face. He was looking at Hiccup. “I don’t speak your language. Would you mind speaking in Arendellen?”

“Sorry,” Hiccup said, not really meaning it. Then memory bubbled up, and he winced. “And… I’m sorry, Your Highness. About your brother.”

This time, it was Anna’s turn to look round in confusion, but Hans merely gave a slightly strained smile. “Thank you for your kind words.”

“Hans?”

“Do not worry about it,” said Hans, patting Anna’s hand. “You must be here for the treaty, of course.”

Hiccup smiled, and did his best not to feel like a scruffy excuse for a leader’s son in the face of both Queen Anna and – Prince? Probably a Prince – Hans. If Arendelle tended towards a southerly culture, the Southern Isles were stranger still to Berk, but that meant that Berk would be just as strange to Prince Hans.

“Of course,” he said. “We just got here a day early. Good winds. Sailing can be a bit unpredictable around here,” he added quickly, as Prince Hans looked uncertain. Perhaps he had not made too many sea voyages, even if the Southern Isles were a fair distance away from here.

“Are you by yourself?” said Anna. “You could come with us!”

“Well–“

A pained look flitted across Hans’s face, and he leant in, partially cutting across Anna and blocking her line of sight to Hiccup. “I am not sure that he really wants–” Hans began.

Frowning, Hiccup interrupted right back. “I was actually just looking for two friends of mine. I said that I’d meet them around here.”

“Let’s go and find them,” said Anna decisively. Hans cleared his throat again, and was ignored again. She let go of Hans’s arm, took hold of Hiccup’s elbow with a surprisingly tight grip, and started steering him back towards the main shopping street. “They’re Vikings too, right?”

“Uh, yes,” said Hiccup, once again finding himself tugged along. That seemed to sum up a lot of his life, really. He glanced over his shoulder to see Hans following them and the Royal Guard, with a resigned expression, behind him. “Both women, our age. Blonde… well, one blonde, one very blonde.”

“I want to meet them. They’re from Berk, right?”

“Well, Astrid is from Berk,” he said, and almost got further before the name _Elsa_ struck him. The name of Queen Anna’s long-ago kidnapped sister might not be the best one to drop into casual conversation. “And, ah, a friend who started living in Berk more recently.”

They rounded the corner and started onto the main street. Hiccup was relieved when Anna let go of his arm, not least because it meant he could get the feeling back in his elbow, but did a double-take when she looped her arm through his. “I should totally visit Berk some day. Maybe next time we have the treaty signing, it could be in Berk. Or maybe the one after would be easier, I’ll have come of age by then.”

He could not help but be struck by the dissonance. Anna was a year older than him, and Queen of Arendelle – but only Queen presumptive, and not to come of age for another five years. Though the thought of having to be Chief still filled him with a dull dread, he did not have any problems with the idea of being an adult.

“Maybe we should talk about that at the signing tomorrow. Come on, let’s go find your friends.”

Hiccup gave up and let himself be dragged along. There were worse people to be monopolised by.

 

 

 

 

 

The weapons shop did not turn up any sign of them, nor the baker, and Hiccup was about to consider climbing onto a roof when he caught sight of Elsa through the crowd and, with a sigh of relief, slipped his arm out of Anna’s and headed towards her.

Elsa was standing in front of a tiny shop sandwiched between two larger and busier ones, close enough that she was not part of the central flow of people, far enough away that the shopkeeper was not trying to pull her into conversation. It was a florist, overflowing with baskets of summer flowers in a far wider variety than would be seen in Berk.

“Hey,” he said, slipping just in front of a man leading a pig through the streets and catching her by the arm. “You all right? Where’s Astrid?”

“She is at the shop with the saddles. They have leather gauntlets, as well,” she said, with a tap of her own wrist.

Well, that explained a lot. “I want you to meet a friend of mine, someone I first met some years ago. Come on,” he said, tugging her around by the hand to face Anna, who had been separated from him by the pig. “This is–”

“Elsa?” said Anna.

Her voice was soft with disbelief, and Hiccup looked up sharply to see that her eyes had gone wide, expression stricken. There was a long, heady pause.

“ _No_ ,” Elsa said finally, sounding choked. What colour there was had drained from her face, leaving her looking ashen. She tried to snatch her hand out of Hiccup’s, but he was too shocked to let go and could only hang on dumbly. He only realised that she had used the Arendellen word when she reverted back to Northur. “There is a mistake. I must go.”

“Elsa?” Anna repeated. She stepped up and tried to grab Elsa’s hands, but Elsa spun round so that she was on the other side of Hiccup. “Elsa, it is…” she switched from Arendellen to Northur as well. “It is you?”

“No!” Elsa whimpered.

“What’s going on?” said Hiccup, finally finding his tongue. He looked at Elsa again, but she twisted her wrist sharply and broke his grip before staggering back until she bumped into the edge of the florist’s table. The flowers quivered, and the man looked round sharply.

For another breathless moment, the two women stared at each other, Elsa shaking and Anna breathing heavily. It was Anna who found her breath first, still looking as if she had been punched in the gut. “She’s my sister.”

“ _What?_ ”

“No, you are wrong. I am sorry. This is a mistake.” Elsa tried to bolt, but Anna lunged in front of her and Elsa stopped abruptly, just out of reach. “This is wrong.”

Anna stretched out a hand towards the shell brooch at Elsa’s throat, even though the gesture failed as Elsa stepped away. “You wear it like mother did,” she said quietly.

The breath was driven out of his lungs as he saw it. The last time that he had seen someone wear a brooch at the collar of their shirt had been Queen Idunna, three years ago. That had been some gemstone, not blue shell, but Elsa placed it just the same. Once he saw that, he saw the shape of Elsa’s face as well, the bone structure just the same as Anna’s but still sharper around the cheekbones even now, the same brilliant blue eyes. There would be plenty of girls out there called Elsa with younger sisters called Anna – named after the princesses themselves – but he had never stopped to wonder how of those Elsas would be nineteen now, and how many could have vanished at exactly eight years old.

Princess Elsa had never been kidnapped. She had been _exiled_.

“Anna, we can explain,” he said quickly. “But we have to–”

“You are alive,” Elsa breathed, and it came out of her like the lost half of a prayer, tears filling her eyes.

The air around them began to grow cold, and Hiccup felt his throat tighten as a chilly wind blew down the street. Elsa’s hand twitched upwards, towards Anna’s hair, then she snatched it back to her chest again. The first of her tears began to fall, but as she turned away from Anna Hiccup stepped in front of her again and held up both of his hands, unable to let her run away from whatever was happening. They had to move off the main street, of course they did, but running would not help. “Elsa,” he said.

He was caught by surprise by the terror in her gaze. Elsa clutched both of her hands to her chest, backing away a step, and when Hiccup looked down he realised that ice was creeping over the trollwort bracelets.

“It’s you,” said Anna. She stepped up and caught Elsa by the shoulders, shocked laughter breaking from her lips. “It’s really–”

She screamed as ice shot up from the ground. Elsa stumbled away from them both, panting like a wounded animal, the air around them dropping in temperature again. Spikes of ice pierced the air between them, chest-height and glittering sharp. The air seemed to dim, and Hiccup glanced up to see that clouds were beginning to gather in the previously blue sky.

Someone else turned at the scream, and screamed in turn at the ice, and suddenly the street was a hubbub of shouting and people trying to run. There was a shout of ‘Witchcraft!’ from somewhere around them, and even though it was in Arendellen Elsa flinched from the word.

“Elsa, it’s all right,” Hiccup said quickly, trying to step towards her. She backed away, shaking her head, bumping into someone running and almost being knocked over for her trouble. Somebody was calling for the guards. “Come on, let’s go.”

They could run, they could hide in the city until the panic passed, they could get back to the boats and sort this out from there. Elsa looked at Anna desperately, pleading with her eyes, and for a moment Hiccup thought that they had won through and she would stay, but then there was another shout from behind her.

“Your Majesty!” The Royal Guard and Hans finally caught up with them; Hans slid to a halt at the sight of the ice, jaw going slack, but the Royal Guard only faltered for a moment before drawing his sword. “Keep back!”

Wind cut through the street, so cold that it stung and so strong that it buffeted Hiccup sideways. White specks of snow appeared in the air, barely falling at all, as the Royal Guard started across the now-clear street towards them.

“You! Stop there!”

With one final look at Anna, Elsa turned and ran.

 

 

 

 

 

The Royal Guard tried to follow, but another blast of wind, gale-strong, knocked him back before he could take two steps. Anna staggered into Hiccup, and only years of life on Berk stopped him from falling over altogether.

“Guards!” Hans shouted, his voice ringing like a bell. “Guards, to your Queen.”

“No, Hans, you don’t understand,” said Anna, grabbing at the sleeve of his coat.

Two pairs of Royal Guards were already running towards them, one pair from each end of the street. Hans pointed out to one of them. “You! Raise the alarm! You!” He turned to the others. “Notify the temple. We need double-guards on the gates and an immediate curfew. Anna,” finally he turned to her, taking both of her upper arms in his and looking at her intensely. Concern, more than anger, marked his features; he did not know, of course, that there was no danger to Anna. “We have to return to the Castle immediately.”

“Hans, this isn’t a matter for the Guard,” she said.

“This is magic!” He looked at her in horror, eyes scanning her face. “We have to investigate this at once, we–”

“No, she’s not _dangerous_ , she’s just–”

“What have you done to her?” said Hans suddenly, rounding on Hiccup. He released Anna, hand going to the hilt of his sword. “Is this some magic from the North?”

For a breath, all that Hiccup could do was stare in disbelief. A fear of magic was one thing, but he had never expected a reaction like this, the streets already emptying and the Royal Guard – soldiers, in the names of the gods, _soldiers_ for a frightened young woman – being called out. Then a disbelieving, spluttered laugh passed his lips, and in a heartbeat Hans’s sword was drawn and pointing towards him.

“I have no idea what’s going on!” said Hiccup. All that he could do for now was tell the lies that they wanted to hear. “We don’t have _magic_ in Berk!”

Anna looked as if she was about to either burst into tears or hit someone. “Hans, stop! Guardsman,” she said to the one remaining Royal Guard, “stand down. Pass on that order to your Captain–”

“You will do no such thing!” said Hans.

“In the name of your _Queen_ ,” Anna began, anger clearly rising in her voice and her hands curling into fists.

“Guardsman, there is a magic user loose in Arendelle. It is written into the laws of this Kingdom that they be apprehended.” Hans’s eyes fell on Hiccup. “Escort the Berkian back to the castle; we will need to discuss what will be done. Anna, come with me, we need to go back now.”

“No!” she said. She snatched her hand away before Hans could take it, at the same moment that the guardsman looked down in order to sheathe his sword.

Well, Hiccup supposed they were already in deep trouble. Might as well go deeper.

He grabbed Anna’s hand, and ran. Although she yelped with surprise, she quickly caught on, and followed as he barrelled down side-streets and alleys that he had found over the last few years. Arendelle was not large, and there was nowhere that they could hide from the Royal Guard, not for long, but if they could just get far enough away for him to think then he might be able to figure out what to do next.

Their path led them to a residential area, the houses of those who worked down at the docks or in service, not the homes of craftsmen. It was snowing properly now, large sharp flakes that were rapidly turning Hiccup’s hands and cheeks numb and sticking his hair to his head. His breath puffed in front of him, eyes scanning, until he finally saw a narrow gap in someone’s fence, a rotten plank having fallen away.

Being a hiccup had taught him some tricks. He dragged Anna over and squeezed through the gap, having to turn his head sideways and breath out fully to get his chest through. To her credit, Anna did not question him, even though she struggled to fit her own chest through and grunted with discomfort as she did so.

They were in someone’s back garden, a patch of plants which Hiccup faintly recognised as edible with an outhouse in one corner and a woodshed in the other. Before they could be spotted, he dragged Anna behind the woodshed, this gap just about wide enough for their shoulders as they faced each other.

“This is bad,” he said aloud, unable to help the words from coming out. “Oh gods, this is bad, this is so messed up…”

“What is going on?” said Anna. “That was, that…” she waved vaguely.

“She’s panicking, her magic is out of control,” said Hiccup. He ran a hand through his hair, finding it full of half-melted snow. “If we can get to her, I can calm her down, I’ve done it before,” his voice was shaking, words tumbling over each other. “For Odin’s sake, I didn’t know it was you!”

The words turned sharp with frustration, and Anna looked taken aback. With a groan, Hiccup quickly caught himself.

“No, not you, I mean, I didn’t know she was your _sister_.” Another memory flared: Anna, aged seven, sneaking him into a room they were not supposed to enter and raising a blanket to show him a painting that was never supposed to be seen. The King and Queen with both their daughters, Anna a toddler on her mother’s lap and Princess Elsa standing beside them. That Elsa’s hair had been white-blonde as well. “I didn’t think that _that_ Elsa was Princess Elsa, that would be crazy! How could a wildling with ice magic be the lost…”

“Wait, what?” Anna looked at him in bewilderment. “She – no, it doesn’t matter,” she shook her head. “We have to find her, that’s the most important thing.”

“Follow the cold,” said Hiccup. “It centres on her.” He looked up at the sky, which was now all but solid with clouds. At the horizon they were white, some even tinged pale blue, but as they drew closer to Arendelle they became grey-purple with snow. A cold wind on the back of his head made him look round to see the sky darkening in that direction, and when he untangled his thoughts he realised it was the direction they had already been moving in. “North.”

“Well, come on then,” said Anna, and he had to give her credit that her voice was more frustration than panic. “We have to go!”

It was Anna who dragged him back out of the garden, but he had to take the lead as they started to duck down streets and alleys once again. More than once, they caught sight of Royal Guards and had to turn around quickly, fleeing from the green coats, the bells they rang, and the voices shouting for curfew. Most of the houses had already shuttered their windows and closed their doors, and Hiccup doubted whether anyone who saw them would report them anyway – either from the fear thick in the air, or just assuming that they were also running home.

He kept them heading north, through increasingly narrow streets and alleys and between smaller houses without gardens. The clouds were still building ahead of them, and Hiccup could only tear his eyes away in order to watch where he was going, still pulling Anna along.

When they reached the main road that followed the City Wall, he slammed to a halt, staying behind the wall of the last house – a craftsman’s, again, facing the road – facing onto the road. There were Royal Guards at the base of the Wall, shouting and brandishing weapons.

At one lone figure.

Taking deep breaths, trying to tell himself that he was wrong, Hiccup looked carefully around the edge of the house again. Anna put her hands on his arm as she craned around as well, and he heard her sharp intake of breath.

“Elsa!”

He had to wrap both arms around Anna’s waist to stop her from running into the road, and pull her back behind the house. “No!” he hissed. “We can’t just run out there.”

“She’s my _sister_!” snapped Anna. She drew in a deep breath, and Hiccup could see that she was about to shout to the guards; he did the only thing he could think of, and clamped his right hand over her mouth. Whatever Anna tried to shout, it came out as a sharp damp press of air against his palm.

The wind was gusting so hard that Hiccup could not even make out what the Royal Guards were saying, not thirty yards away; the snow was so thick that he could not see what Elsa was doing. Strikes on his skin felt like hailstones, but he could not see clearly enough to tell. A low groan filled the air, and the earth seemed to rumble beneath their feet. They both stumbled, grabbing at the wall for support, and Anna looked too shocked to think about running even when Hiccup lost his grip.

They looked round again. Elsa was backed against the City Wall, ragged clear sheets of ice bursting from the ground in front of her. Hiccup thought that he saw crossbow bolts buried in some of them, but he could not be sure. The wall was coated in ice, rime-white and forming spines that crept out along the joins of the masonry.

One of the Royal Guards stepped forwards and, with a roar, bought his sword down on the sheet of ice nearest to him. It shattered in all directions; Elsa screamed, and lightning cracked as thunder boomed overhead.

The same guard staggered back a step, but Hiccup saw him brace himself and start forwards again, raising his arm for the next piece of ice that blocked his path. Elsa cowered back against the wall, holding her hands above her head, and screamed words that Hiccup did not understand but which still felt in his chest like a plea to stop.

The Wall at her back exploded. Ice swept over Elsa’s head like a frozen wave as the great stones came crashing down, the grey blocks smashing the thinner sheets of ice around her and sending the Royal Guards scattering like frightened children. Beneath them, the ground shook again, and ice slicked out along the ground faster than flowing water. Several of the Guards fell, and Hiccup felt his left foot slip before bracing it against the ice.

In the middle of the fallen stone, the shattered ice, Elsa stood with her hands shielding her head. For a moment she lowered them, and Hiccup could have sworn that she looked straight at him and Anna, but then she turned, scrambled over the ragged stones that remained, and fled.

“No!” Anna shouted, the word lost in the wind. She tried to run, Hiccup’s grab missing, but her feet went out from under her and she hit her hands and knees on the ice with a cry.

It was not far from the City Wall to the gorge beyond. Perhaps two hundred yards, aggressively cleared of anything taller than wildflowers. Few of the flowers were visible now through the settling snow, dots of colours against the white as Elsa ran across the gap.

The Royal Guards were starting to get back to their feet, smashing down what ice remained and climbing over stones to reach the gap, calling to each other. The bridge over the gorge was nowhere in sight, but it was guarded besides, and always kept lowered; Hiccup’s heart was in his throat when he realised that Elsa was not slowing down as she approached the gorge.

He wanted to scream, but words would not come. He shielded his eyes against the snow and squinted after her; she did not slow, though she should have reached it, and then…

Then he saw the ice at her feet. Blue-white, shining in what light remained in the day, icy shapes formed a bridge across the gorge, building out as fast as she ran. Elsa did not even look down. She stumbled as she reached the far side, but then she was gone into the trees, snow still falling, and her bridge crumbled behind her.

Elsa was gone, having torn parts of Arendelle apart, and Hiccup did not know how he was going to find her again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, to those of you who are celebrating it now! The plot might be about to thicken.

“We have to go after her!” said Anna. She was struggling to get to her feet in her light summer shoes, her skirt tangling around her legs. “Come on!”

Grabbing her by the arm, Hiccup wondered when he had become the cautious one in any given conversation. “Anna! One, we are not going to be able to run past the guards.” He weathered her glare. “And two, you can’t run off into this weather in that dress. You’ll have frostbite in hours.”

If not worse. The air was cold enough to sting in his nose and mouth, and freezing snow and sleet was sticking his clothes to his skin. Anna’s thicker dress might give her underclothes some protection, but it was only a matter of time before she too was soaked through and freezing. Leading the Queen of Arendelle into hypothermia sounded like a really bad idea.

“Well, we can’t just _leave_ her!” said Anna.

Hiccup gestured for her to lower her voice. Perhaps this last year had given him more practice in situations that bordered on the absurd, or perhaps it was just a little easier to not panic when he had not been faced with such a shock as Anna had.

“We’ll follow her,” he said. “I know a way that we can travel much quicker, but we won’t be able to use it until it’s dark.” When Anna started to shake her head, he pressed on. “ _Much_ quicker. Quicker than a cart, quicker than a boat, please, you have to trust me on this. But first, you _need_ some warm clothing.” So did Hiccup, but he was more used to the cold and knew how to warm himself up. “I have–” he reached for his purse, which was not there, and groaned. “ _Astrid_ has my money. Unless you were carrying any?”

“What? No, I don’t…” Anna spluttered vaguely, gesturing to herself. He had to admit that unless it was hidden down her top, she didn’t really have anywhere to put money either.

“Fine. Look, the castle isn’t an option, they won’t let you go after her,” he added.

“She’s my sister!” said Anna. She slipped her arm out of Hiccup’s, but only to hug them to her chest, shivering starting to set in. As the Royal Guards behind them shouted, she glanced over her shoulder and then shuffled closer to the house, out of their sight. “And I’m their _Queen_.”

Right now, Hiccup was not sure how much that meant; the fear of magic had been around since long before Anna had been born, never mind since she had become Queen. “And they will want to protect you because of that,” he said instead, an argument that might even be true. “Anna, this is really serious.” Hiccup took a deep breath, clenching his fists to reach for some sort of strength. He had not meant to talk to Anna about this, not yet, but right now it was important. “The Silver Priests? _Silver Priests_?” he added in Arendellen. “They kill people with magic, they–”

“Not any more!” Anna blurted.

They both looked at each other in horror, Hiccup’s mind at least reeling too much for him to form words, until another shout from the Guards sent them both dodging back down the narrow alley beside them, following it around a turn until they were out of sight of the main road.

“How do you know?” said Anna, tight-voiced and wide eyed, just at the same time that Hiccup said, “You _knew_ about them?”

He stood firm, waiting for Anna to be the one to give an explanation, and she tried to look back imperiously until another violent shiver made her wrap her arms around herself again. “They used to,” she said finally. “They told me about it when – when I became Queen. But now if they think someone has magic they don’t do the Trials, they have other tests. Inside the Temple.”

“The Four Trials?” He felt sick, reminded of what Elsa had said, her father begging for the Trial of Earth because it was the only one that an eight-year-old had a chance of surviving. “You knew about them, and you–”

“They don’t happen any more,” said Anna desperately. There were tears in her eyes, but Hiccup could not be sure why, and did not know what to think of them. “They told me about it because they thought that I should know what used to happen, but they don’t do that any more. The _Silver Priests_ help people! They have, they have sickhouses and schools! They’re making up for what they did!”

Perhaps it was time that he admitted to Anna how he knew. “They did it to Elsa,” said Hiccup, and when Anna’s face crumpled and she gasped a sob, he could guess why. “Your father asked for the Trial of Earth, and they sent her into the Wildlands. They’re the reason that Elsa vanished.”

It came out more bitter than he had intended, and Anna put a hand over her mouth, tears rolling down her cheeks and her nose starting to run. When she first tried to reply, it came out a hiccough, but Hiccup knew that if he let go of his anger at the Silver Priests he was going to slide into terror, and was not sure how he could climb out again.

“You can’t trust them, Anna,” he said. “ _Elsa_ is how I know about them. And I…” his voice faltered. “I don’t know how much of what they told you is true.” He reached out to touch Anna’s shoulder, but she pulled away from him. “I know this probably sounds insane, gods, I’m not sure I’d believe me, but please…”

“The first thing I’m going to worry about is getting Elsa back,” said Anna, through chattering teeth. Even though she was shaking, the gaze that she levelled on Hiccup was stern. “Everything else comes after that.”

She was right, of course. “All right,” he said. “First, we need clothes. Come on, we need to head back towards the shops. Find Astrid.”

If he could not find Astrid, he was not quite sure what he was going to do. He doubted that he would be able to get all the way back to the boat, and certainly did not feel comfortable with the idea of stealing clothes.

They walked, rather than running, as they headed back south towards the shops. Anna kept her arms wrapped around herself, and Hiccup tucked his hands up into the cuffs of his sleeves as he continued on. His stump ached, but he was more worried about the lack of pain left in his hands as he lost feeling in them altogether.

He was not sure what he could say to Anna. Too much hung in the air between them, and he was not sure where to begin; part of him wondered if it should have been easy to understand her secrets, with so many of his own, but the rest could not stomach the comparison of protecting the dragons with hiding the actions of the Silver Priests.

As they got closer to the square that held the statue of Queen Joan, shouting caught his attention, with snatches of words that sounded distinctly Northur. Hiccup broke into a trot as the wind lulled just enough for him to recognise Astrid’s voice, but stopped at the corner and peered round carefully.

Astrid was standing in front of one of the Royal Guards, both of them red-cheeked and shouting at each other even though, Hiccup quickly realised, neither of them understood a word the other was saying.

“Return – to – your – ship!” shouted the Guard, forming waves with one hand and separating the words as if that would make them easier to understand. “Boat! Vessel!”

“What have you done with Hiccup?” Astrid shouted back, with a wave of her arm. Her hand was not quite fully clenched, probably aching for the handle of an axe. “Where is he? Where is – gah!”

At least she was not using Elsa’s name, he supposed. Hiccup groaned, and leant against the wall as Anna caught up with him, glancing round.

“I-is t-t-that,” she said through chattering teeth, “o-one of your fr-riends?”

“Yeah, that’s the other one I was going to introduce you to,” said Hiccup. He was starting to shiver as well, but Berk’s winters made this look unremarkable. Snow in summer might be an exceptional rarity, but he knew that it had happened in living memory. He just had to work out how to get Astrid’s attention without getting the Royal Guard involved as well.

He patted himself down and scanned the ground around him, looking for a stone or something to throw that might actually attract her attention, when his hand fell on the whistle still tucked into his belt. He had forgotten that he had even put it there that morning, too busy trying to find his knife. Peering back at Astrid and the Guard, still caught in their doubly one-sided argument, he put the whistle to his lips and blew, a short trill of a sound with a lift at the end.

“What was _th-that_?” hissed Anna.

“A tune she uses,” Hiccup replied, without looking round. He saw Astrid hesitate, shoulders stiffening and head lifting like she was listening again. The tune in question was what Astrid used to call Stormfly to her, but he did not have time to explain that to Anna right now. While there was a pause in the Guard’s shouting, quite possibly just from confusion that Astrid had stopped shouting back, Hiccup played the tune again.

This time, Astrid looked round, and her eyes locked onto Hiccup for a fraction of a second. “All right, all right!” she shouted, turning back to the Guard. Hiccup backed away, pushing Anna back as well. “I’ll go! Keep your hat on!”

“Hey – hey! Not that way! You stupid…” the Guard trailed off with a frustrated, wordless shout, and seconds later Astrid was rounding the corner and Hiccup grabbed her by the arm to pull her down a sidestreet again.

Mercifully, she let him. Anna followed, both of the women looking at each other uncertainly, as Hiccup dragged them round first one corner, then another, into a dead-end alley with a bricked-up doorway that gave some shelter from the wind as well as privacy from the larger streets.

“What’s going on?” said Astrid, as soon as they were all in the deep doorway. She had her arms wrapped around herself as well, but it seemed that her anger was burning more than hot enough. “Is this…”

She trailed off, looking over at Anna.

“Yes, it’s Elsa.” Hiccup did not have time for this. “We have to find her. Astrid, this is Anna. Anna, Astrid.” He doubted that Anna would much care about her title right now. “Astrid, you still have my money, right? I need you to get us clothes that we can travel in, something warm. And then get Toothless to us, once night falls.”

“Not asking much.” Astrid pressed her lips into a thin line, shaking her head. “Hiccup, they’ve shut everything down. Shouting something about a – a _curfew_?” she mimicked the Arendellen word, pronunciation slightly off.

“Curfew. Look, the people live in their shops,” said Hiccup. “Knock on the doors, show them the money. Warm clothes won’t be a weird thing to be asking for. We’re only here for a few days, we really don’t have winter clothes with us.”

It was clear from Astrid’s face that she was still not convinced, but she rolled her eyes and sighed. “Fine. I’ll try. Give me enough time for those idiots in green coats to be gone. Just you?” she glanced at Anna. “Or both of you?”

“Both.” Anna set her eyes on Astrid.

To Hiccup’s surprise, Astrid tilted her chin up, but looked at Anna less distrustfully. He didn’t have time to ask, though, before Astrid pulled the purse from her belt, weighed it in her hand, and cocked an eyebrow at Hiccup.

“I’ll get what I can,” said Astrid. “Stay here.”

“Well, we weren’t planning on going sightseeing.”

 

 

 

 

 

They huddled in silence, filling up most of the doorway by the time that they turned shoulder-to-shoulder and both crossed their arms. The wind died down a little, but remained northerly, and the snow grew so thick and the sky so dark that it was as if the sun was setting hours early. Hiccup could see no further than two or three rows of houses.

“What’s she like?” said Anna, breaking the silence that stretched like an icy cobweb between them. Hiccup looked round. “Elsa. What’s she like now?”

“She’s brave,” he said, and when his voice cracked he tried to tell himself that it was because of the cold. “More – more brave than she realises. She’s so scared that she’ll hurt someone, with this,” he waved vaguely at the sky, “but she faces it every day and she keeps fighting.”

It felt strange to see Anna, the Princess who had always been smiling and coming up with some game or mischief, with tears in her eyes and shivering, but there was something grateful in her eyes. When she did not tell him to stop, he licked his lips, regretted it as cold stung his tongue, and kept his gaze on hers.

“She’s loyal, and she’s kind. She doesn’t hold any ill-will even to people that were scared of her, or angry.” If anything, she had seemed to think that they were right. Hiccup did not agree with her, but he could still admire that she did not resent them. Hiccup sighed. “She’s smart, as well – she learnt Northur so fast, I’ve never seen anyone manage it like that. Within a couple of months, she spoke it better than some Vikings I’ve known.”

At that, Anna laughed, though shivering made it wobble. “I thought she was the smartest person in the world when we were kids. True, we were kids, and the world wasn’t that _big_ then, but…” she shrugged. “And she would help me learn things.”

“She missed you,” said Hiccup, making Anna look up sharply. “She talked about you a lot… I mean, as much as she talked about things. But her childhood, it was always you. I showed her how to write your name,” he added, thinking of that night beside the fire when neither of them could escape their nightmares. “Knowing her, she probably memorised it.”

“Really? I mean, I guess I’d hoped that she’d remember me, but eight is pretty young, you know, I mean, I was five and there’s so little that I remember. I just… I’m glad, you know?” she looked at him hopefully.

He thought of his mother, of the words he had shared only with Elsa, fearing that he did not remember properly at all. “I know,” he said, quietly.

Anna took a few deep breaths, broken up by shivering again, and rubbed her cheeks with shaking hands. Her nose and cheeks were red, but her hands were turning pale, even as she shoved them straight back under her armpits again. It was hard to tell how much time passed as they stood next to each other, Hiccup trying to grab hold of any of his thoughts. He had to help Elsa; he had to find Elsa; he had to think how to deal with the Silver Priests; the law overruled what even Queen Anna had said; he and the Queen were hiding in an alley doorway in a city under curfew, waiting to sneak out after a Wildling magic-user.

Perhaps his father was right. He did not have much of a sense of what ridiculous was any more.

It was not long before Astrid returned, whistling her tune for Stormfly before coming round the corner, a sack in one hand. She dumped it unceremoniously in front of them and stepped back, folding her arms over her chest, while Hiccup hunkered down and pulled it open.

“I got what I could,” she said. “Strangely enough, there’s not much in the way of winter clothes around right now.”

“Thank you,” said Hiccup. The first thing out of the bag was a deep pink cloak, which he immediately passed to Anna to wrap around her shoulders. It was trimmed in deeper pink stitching, some Arendellen pattern, but most importantly it was thick wool and Anna gave a huff of relief as she pulled it on and fumbled at the clasp with frozen fingers. It was followed by a long-sleeved blue dress and some sort of blue and gold bodice which he hastily passed in her direction, along with a pair of thick woollen hose.

“Uh,” Anna looked over the clothes, then at herself, then around their nook of alley. “How do I do this?”

“Put the hose first,” said Astrid, before Hiccup could try to mentally adapt the process of changing under the blankets to women’s clothing. “And just sort of… huddle under the cloak. Be quick,” she added, as if that was not apparent.

“How did you get all this?” said Hiccup. “There wasn’t that much money.”

“Skilful negotiation,” said Astrid.

Hiccup looked at her pointedly, but she didn’t budge. “And speaking no Arendellen helped with this how?”

“Fine.” Astrid rolled her eyes. “I expressed that I was willing to stand outside his shop and look dangerous enough to put people off, if he didn’t make the trade.”

Hiccup groaned. “How do you even… what hand gestures are there to express that?” he said. “No, no, there’s not time.” Let it remain a mystery, he supposed. Astrid could be very good at communicating without words, he had to admit, and he did not have the time to ask or even to particularly wonder.

Another quick delve in the bag turned up a second cloak, this one dark grey and looking a bit rougher around the edges than Anna’s, two pairs of thick gloves, and two hats. Tucking one pair of gloves into his belt, he nodded for Astrid to step back round the corner with him and give Anna a touch of privacy in which to change.

“Who _is_ she?” hissed Astrid, as soon as they were out of sight.

“Her name’s Anna,” Hiccup replied. Judging by Astrid’s raised eyebrows, that was not what she meant. “She’s… she’s Elsa’s sister.”

Whatever Astrid might have been thinking of saying, it was driven from her mouth. She gaped at Hiccup, hands dropping to her sides and eyes going wide. “Her _sister_?” she said.

“Yeah, I…” Hiccup steepled his fingers together, dropping his head to his hand. “I didn’t know. I went to introduce them. They look so similar, when they’re next to each other, and I guess Anna recognised Elsa’s hair, and maybe Elsa saw that white streak, I don’t know. Neither of them was sure the other was alive,” he added, feeling almost ashamed to say the words. When he looked up, Astrid was still boggling. “It was… emotional. And really not the way in which they should have met again.”

“You didn’t know, did you?”

The worst part might have been how warily Astrid was looking at him – as if she was not quite sure, as if she would protest his innocence if anyone else were to question it, but was holding back her own questions. Hiccup felt sick, guilt roiling in his chest, wondering if he should have put it all together before.

“No,” he said. He wasn’t sure how he had quite intended for it to sound, but hopeless was probably not at the top of the list. Astrid’s expression softened, though. “Look, I know that between this and Toothless, I’m asking a lot of you, but… can you please tell my father that I’m all right? He’ll have worked out that this is Elsa, as well. He needs to know that I’m going after her. Maybe…” he glanced round as Anna cursed in Arendellen. “Maybe don’t tell him about Anna yet, though.”

“All right,” she said.

It was too soft, not sounding like the Astrid that he was used to in sharp, burning moments like this, and it made him feel all the more unsettled. Hiccup pulled on the cloak, wrapping it quickly over himself, before pulling on the gloves and flexing his fingers to start getting the feeling back into them.

“Really, Astrid, I can’t thank you enough for this,” he said. “I just… I have to fix this.” Not that he was even sure how he was going to do that yet, but he had to all the same. “And I’m going to need Toothless to even have a chance of catching Elsa in the Wildlands.”

“Remember that inlet that we saw, not far out from Arendelle?” said Astrid. It was a relief to hear her voice grow no-nonsense again, see her demeanour harden. “I’ll get Toothless there, somehow. How are you going to get out of the city? There are Royal Guards everywhere. They just kept shouting at me because they think I’m some idiot Viking who can’t understand them. In Arendellen clothes, they’ll think you’re a native.”

“We’ll figure something out. Anna knows this city, after all.” He kept to himself that most of her knowledge about it was from a window; at least that meant that she had seen the layout of the streets. She had told him a lot of what he knew about the city and its past anyway, and there had to be more that she had never found time to tell him.

Astrid hesitated, then grabbed his shoulders and pulled him into a hug so fierce that it hurt. “Be careful,” she said.

“When am I not?” Hiccup joked, through his breathlessness.

It probably should have earnt him a punch, but Astrid just snorted and squeezed him a little tighter, her cheek pressed to his. The metal of her pauldrons was stinging cold against his chin, but he ignored it.

“You need to get back to the ship. Get warmed up as well,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Astrid replied, but finally stepped back to hold him at arm’s length instead. “Come back with both hands, all right? No losing more limbs.”

“Don’t worry. Wouldn’t want to infringe on Gobber’s territory.”

She dragged him in and kiss him on the lips, cold and hard and protective, and even if it was only a touch it made him feel a little warmer again. “Muttonhead,” she said softly.

“All right,” said Anna. They jumped apart as if they had been caught, and Hiccup suppressed the urge to rub his mouth. “I’m ready.”

Anna stepped around the corner to join them, green dress now draped over her arm, and paused for a moment to hitch her hose into position. As she did so, she revealed her shoes, which were little more than leather slippers.

With a groan, Astrid bent down and started pulling off her own boots. “Come on,” she said. “Those aren’t going to help you.”

“Wait,” said Anna, “what?”

“Those shoes,” said Astrid, with a jab of her finger at Anna’s feet, “are going to get you frostbite. Come on, borrow mine. Someone on the boat will have spares.”

Hiccup could not help feeing inordinately glad that there was one of them who seemed to be able to take charge and who knew what they were doing. He pulled his cloak more tightly around himself as the women swapped shoes, Anna stomping her feet as she tried to get used to the heavy Viking boots while Astrid scowled at her end of the deal.

“We should get going,” said Hiccup. “It might not be nightfall, but it’s getting dark. And the longer we wait, the more attention the Guards will pay.”

“All right,” said Anna, squaring her shoulders. “Let’s go.”

 

 

 

 

 

Astrid took off back towards the boats – and Stoick and Toothless, of course – while Anna and Hiccup made their way east through the eerily empty city streets. Beneath a cloak, it was easier to think, and though his shirt was still damp the water warmed up as he moved and was considerably more bearable.

“There used to be five gates in and out of the city,” Anna had explained, “but the Silver Priests wanted four – you know, one for each of the Gods and Goddesses. So one of them was closed up. If there’s going to be any way to get out of the city right now, it’s going to be there.”

“That or swimming,” Hiccup had replied grimly.

They passed into the warehouses and the docks, the huge buildings eerily quiet in the snowy gloom. It was getting increasingly difficult to be sure of their direction, and Hiccup was relieved when he caught sight of the towers that were spaced along the City Wall to keep it safe. It took more than a few instances of hiding from Guards to make it there, time which Hiccup was not even sure that they had, but somehow Anna’s memory won out and they found themselves at the abandoned gate.

It had been blocked up, pale stones and dark mortar filling the archway, the towers that flanked it now dark and cold. Snow was already starting to pile in drifts along the wall and door both, but at least there were no Royal Guards anywhere in sight.

“Look,” said Anna, pointing up. “That window – there’s a gap there.”

“Too small for us,” Hiccup replied, shielding his eyes from the snow.

“We could get leverage on the other planks.”

Hiccup’s hand strayed to the knife on his belt, the hilt a reassuring touch, and thought of the way that the Gronckle iron had cut through wood, meat, bone, even bitten deep into steel. “No,” he said. “I’ve got a better idea. Wait here,” he said, looking her over. “That cloak’s too visible.”

With one last glance up and down the road, peering through the still-thickening snow in case of green coats, Hiccup ran across the road and to the old building. He looked over the door quickly, and huffed with annoyance when he saw that the lock had been filled with molten metal, sealing it for good. There was probably a way around even that, though. Pressing as close to the door as he could, and hoping that if anyone looked over he just looked like another stretch of wall.

He dug the tip of his knife into the wood around the lower hinge, digging out chips of wood as easily as carving clay. The thick iron of the hinge chipped and nocked when the edge of the knife caught it, but Hiccup was more worried about pressing through the wood, beyond glad when he finally saw the dark empty air on the other side and could start pressing along the wood, cutting around the hinge altogether.

The second one was harder, above his head where he could not get his weight behind it, but he started underneath and stabbed away determinedly, every heartbeat feeling like an eternity even though his pulse was probably racing. When he was about halfway round, he put his shoulder to the door and shoved; for a moment, it did not give, then he felt something, and with a grunt threw himself against it again. This time it gave perhaps an inch, and he crouched down and forced his shoulder against it, hearing the old wood creak and groan as it was pushed in a way it was never intended to.

There was a flash of pink, and then Anna was beside him, pushing a shoulder against the door as well and her feet against the stone wall. The wood crunched, something gave, and they both scrambled through, letting the door boom hollowly back into place behind them.

Anna sat on the floor while Hiccup stood, bent over with his hands on his knees. His arms trembled, but he was not sure if it was exertion or fear, and it took him a moment to catch his breath again.

“We did it,” said Anna, voice made hollow by the stone walls around them. “We’re out.”

“Not quite yet.” Hiccup replied. Anna punched him in the thigh. “Hey!”

“We’ll just find a window. The wind’s coming from the north, right? Snow will be deeper on that side.”

There were no doors on the outside of the towers, nothing except for the gates proper. Hiccup pulled Anna to her feet, and they groped their way in the darkness to a twisting flight of stone steps that wound around the tower. It was not at all far before they came to a window, shutters nailed closed from the inside, and by squinting through the gaps they could be sure that it faced out onto the snow-covered woods to the east of the city.

Hiccup dug out the nails again, and they hauled the shutters open, being met with a blast of cold air and a whirl of thick snowflakes. It was enough to sting his eyes, but he craned to look out to the window to the snow below.

It was impossible to tell how far down the snow was, or how deep. Hiccup frowned, doubting whether this was really a good idea, just as Anna climbed up onto the sill and crouched in place.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he flung an arm in front of her. “You’re just going to go for it?”

“The ground’s flat out here, so the snow’s gotta be deep,” said Anna, with an airy shrug. “Come on!”

Pushing his arm out of the way, she pushed off and jumped, leaving him flailing at mid-air in something of an attempt to catch her. There was a flail of limbs, then she landed spread-eagled in the snow, and pulled her cloak over her face to wave up at Hiccup.

“I’m good! It’s fine!”

He had spent plenty of this winter flailing around in snow; truth be told, he had spent much of his life in general flailing around in snow, so another day was probably not that much of a loss. Taking a deep breath, he pushed off from the windowsill, felt the terrible moment of hanging in the air, and then he hit the snow on his back. It was like a wet slap from shoulders to backside, but did not hurt, and he staggered upright thigh-deep in snow.

“See?” said Anna. “I told you it was fine!”

“Let’s get to the eastern woods first,” he said, “and worry about ‘I told you so’ later, all right? I don’t want to get caught now.”

 

 

 

 

 

Even once they reached the woods, he could not stop looking over his shoulder. Their path through the snow would be easy to follow, at least until it filled up again, and they had left plenty of evidence of their passing at the guard tower. Anna was jubilant, though, smiling and eagerly trying to coax him to walk faster to their meeting point with Astrid down by the shore.

“So, how exactly are we going to be travelling, if we’re going to be moving faster than Elsa?” said Anna, as they wove between the tall pine trees. Hiccup was still trying to keep heading for the sea, this time travelling with the wind and not against. At least the trees made the wind more bearable.

Hiccup laughed nervously. “I’m going to need you to promise not to freak out.”

“That’s… not exactly reassuring.” Now with somewhat less of a smile, Anna slowed so that she was more beside than in front of him.

So far, Hiccup had not really found an ideal way to introduce people to dragons. No doubt part of that was the differences in people and the differences in dragons. But he had to admit that warning Anna in advance was probably going to be a better idea than just dragging her into a clearing with Toothless and hoping.

He took a deep breath, clasping his hands together. “I have a dragon.”

Anna stopped dead, just shy of walking into a tree branch.

“He’s not dangerous,” Hiccup added quickly. It was not quite true, because he knew the power that coiled in every muscle of Toothless’s body, the heat of the fire in him, but it was true enough, at least. “He won’t hurt anyone. Elsa and I, we made friends with him last summer. We protect him, and he protects us.”

“A dragon,” said Anna. A moment behind the conversation was better than not taking part at all, he supposed.

He threw it all in. “A Night Fury. I mean, _have_ isn’t necessarily the right word. I _know_ a dragon. He’s fast, and he’s strong, and he knows Elsa. We can catch up to her easily with him.”

“When you say, ‘with him’…” said Anna, with a careful pointing gesture of one gloved hand.

“I mean flying.”

Anna’s eyes went wide, and for a moment Hiccup was sure that he had said the worst possible thing, but then she grabbed his hands in hers and a delighted smile lit up her face. “Really? You mean actually flying. With a dragon. This isn’t some sort of weird misunderstanding and you’re actually talking about that drakkar or whatever; we actually get to go _flying_? That is so amazing! I mean,” she caught herself, and tried to act more sober – more queenly, perhaps; “Is it safe? Like, I don’t mean not eating us safe – well, I suppose I do mean not eating us safe, because I would hope that he wouldn’t eat us – but more like not dropping us safe?”

 Before replying, he made sure that Anna had actually stopped for an answer, and not just for breath. “There’s a saddle, and a harness. We’ll be fine. You’re not freaking out?”

“Probably a bit,” said Anna, with a shrug, “but I hope that’s normal when looking at meeting a dragon. Is that normal when looking at meeting a dragon?”

He thought of his own terror, of Astrid’s anger. Though he could not be sure quite how Elsa had reacted in those first moments, she had not seemed too surprised by anyone else being afraid. “I suppose it is, really.”

“Well, come on then! Let’s go meet him!” said Anna, finally starting to walk again. With a sigh, but a smile as well, Hiccup started to follow her. This was about the one thing that had managed to go well so far today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~Fun~~ nerdy fact: drakkar or drekar is the name of the largest type of Viking longship. Its meaning? Dragon.


	5. Chapter 5

They reached the inlet before too long, a steep narrow valley with what looked like little more than a track between the trees leading down into it, and Hiccup stopped and stared at what lay before him. Even the continuing snowfall had not prepared him for the sight: the sea itself was frozen, great groaning sheets that spread out into the snow-blurred distance.

Anna stepped into the back of him, clapped a hand to her mouth, and said something muffled by her glove. From the tone, it might well have been an expletive.

The seas sometimes froze around Berk, but it was rare, once every few years at the most. The waves were too high, the tides too strong, and only in the deepest of winters when even the wind stilled could the water be tamed.

“Does this… happen, in Arendelle?” said Hiccup weakly.

“I’ve seen the shores of the bay freeze,” Anna said. “But not often. I don’t know about outside the Wings.”

The two promontories that formed the Bay of Arendelle were known there as the Wings of Stone. Hiccup had heard rumours that there had been another name, before the Silver Priests, but nobody seemed to remember quite what it was. Now he took a steadying breath, and led them down the slope, towards the frozen expanse of the sea.

As they dipped down, the wind became lessened again, the hill at their backs sheltering them. Hiccup was starting to feel the bite of thirst in his throat, though, and knew that if he were not so desperately afraid that he would probably have started to feel hungry. They climbed down to the shoreline, sitting down on a falling tree and huddling close for what little warmth there was.

“So, I’m guessing that your friend is going to be flying here as well, then,” said Anna.

“Yes,” said Hiccup, eyes on the sky. The clouds were low and leaden, and once Astrid was above them she would be fine, but getting above them in the first place would probably be the challenge. He knew Astrid would manage it, though. “Toothless is my dragon, not Astrid’s, but she handles him well. She was the first other person that flew.”

“How long has this whole dragon thing been going on?”

He couldn’t help laughing. “A year. Just coming up on it, at least. I met Toothless last summer, and then last autumn everything happened with the Red Death, and since then Berk has just been getting used to the idea of having the dragons out and about, and not in the arena.”

Perhaps he should have expected Anna’s confusion at the term, but he slipped easily enough into explaining what dragons used to be – similar to what they still _were_ to Arendelle – and how Berk had responded to that. The arena, the Book of Dragons. Anna sat with her chin in her hand, drinking in his words as if it was the most interesting thing he had ever heard and not just the normal world that Hiccup had grown up in.

Somewhere along the line, he lost track of time. It felt amazing to talk about things to an outsider, about meeting Toothless, about making his tail and saddle, about the Red Death and the sudden peace that had followed. Before he knew it, he was talking about Alvin’s misdeeds, Anna frowning along, and moving on to what they planned to do with the academy this summer once he returned, starting to teach people good things about the dragons, how to live alongside them and help them. He wanted other people to start having dragons of their own, if they wanted them, and was not fool enough to miss that it was most of the kids who seemed the most open to the idea.

Perhaps they had less preconceptions to get over. Perhaps they had less of themselves that they needed to rewrite.

He broke off as a shadow in the clouds above him caught his eye; Anna started to question, then shaded her eyes and peered upwards as well. Toothless cut down through the clouds, diving down in seconds with that distinctive cut-air whistle, then flared his wings as Astrid pulled him into a landing.

Anna screamed as the Night Fury’s wings unfurled fit to blot out the sky above them. She jumped upright, stumbled back over the log on which they had been sitting, and hit the ground in a puff of snow.

“It’s all right!” said Hiccup. He stood up, almost tripped over his prosthetic with his right foot, and cursed them both for turning this into such a spectacle before managing to wave his hands and get her attention. “It’s fine! That’s him!”

Panting and wide-eyed, Anna fell still, glancing at Hiccup for a moment before looking back to Toothless. “He’s bigger than I expected,” she said, in a slightly strangled way.

Astrid slid off Toothless’s back, and Toothless immediately walked over to rub his forehead against Hiccup’s side, rumbling so low that Hiccup felt it more than heard it. He wrapped an arm around Toothless’s neck and resisted the urge to bury his face in his dragon’s neck until the pangs of fear at least abated somewhat.

For now, he did not mention that Toothless was probably the smallest dragon, other than the Terror, that they had. “Come on, come and say hello,” he said instead, gesturing for Anna to get to her feet. She did so without taking her eyes off Toothless, clumps of snow sloughing off her. “Reach out your hand – should be all right with the glove, I guess.”

It wasn’t leather, just waterproofed wool, and hopefully would not overrule Anna’s smell which he would guess Toothless would be searching for. Toothless was already sniffing the air, flaps half-flared, as Hiccup carefully arranged Anna’s hand in the right position, tugging her close enough that she would be in range.

“All right. Now look away.”

“Wait, what?”

“Look away. It’s a trust thing. Humans have predator eyes,” he said, with a gesture to his own face. It earnt him a confused look, and he saw Astrid shake her head.

“Predators have forward-facing eyes for depth perception,” said Astrid. “Turning your eyes away makes you look less of a threat.”

Anna chuckled nervously. “I really don’t think I’m the threat here.”

All the same, she looked away, scrunching up her eyes and holding her breath as Toothless sniffed at her hand, breath misty on the air, before finally rubbing his nose into her palm with a low murmur.

“Oh…” Anna’s eyes went wide, staring at the trees for a few seconds before carefully peeking sideways. Toothless continue his sniffing up her arm and down her back, sticking his nose beneath her cloak as she arched her back and looked at Hiccup with a question in her eyes.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Might be the colour, I don’t think I’ve seen any fabric that shade on Berk. Or maybe the smell of Arendelle is interesting.”

“My city does not smell.”

“Doesn’t smell of sheep, certainly,” said Astrid.

Anna lifted her arm and turned so that she was facing Toothless, his nose inches from her chest. He looked up at her, cocked his head, and chirped uncertainly. ”So,” she said. “You must be Toothless, huh? It’s nice to…” she broke off to cough, wafting a hand in front of her face. “Meet you,” she finished in a slightly strangled voice.

“That would be dragon breath. Come on, bud, let’s not get in Anna’s face, huh?” He grabbed Toothless’s saddle and gave a tug backwards, then a second and third until Toothless finally huffed and stepped backwards. “There we go. So, how is meeting your first dragon?”

“Not that I’d ever imagined meeting a dragon,” said Anna, “but this is less traumatising than I imagined meeting my first dragon would be.”

“Sounds fair to me.”

“Here,” said Astrid, pulling a leather satchel off her shoulder. “I got you what food and water I could from the boats, flint and steel, some lightweight rope and a spyglass. I couldn’t find your compass, though. Did you want your sword?” she added, pointing with her thumb to the weapon slung over her shoulder.

“Thanks, but the knife is probably going to be enough. Stays sharper, as well.” Hiccup nodded to the second satchel. “What’s that?”

“It’s going to take some time to get back to Arendelle,” Astrid replied with a shrug. “Come nightfall I’ll be able to cross the ice and get back to the ship. And don’t worry,” she added. “I let your father know that you’re all right. He was the one who started the distraction for me to get away.”

“Distraction?” he asked warily.

Astrid grinned. “He got Sanguina to start a fight with some of Weselton’s men. Just a scrap, nothing serious. But it got all of those green fools involved, which gave me the chance to get Toothless into the air.”

There were occasions when Hiccup felt as if he did not know his father very much at all. “Well, as long as he knows,” he said, as diplomatically as he was able. “You be careful on the way back, all right?”

“I’m not the one flying into a snowstorm.” Astrid punched his arm, hard enough to sting slightly, then paused and dragged him into a tight hug once again. “Muttonhead,” she muttered, voice just slightly thick.

“I’ll come back,” said Hiccup. When Astrid released him, he caught one of her hands in his. “And I’ll bring Elsa back too.”

At that, Astrid managed a smile. “Good. I don’t think Toothless would forgive you otherwise.”

 

 

 

 

 

They flew straight towards the centre of the storm.

Despite his fears, Anna did not particularly cling to him, even as they cut upwards through the freezing clouds to break into clear air again. Only it was not clear; there were bands of clouds layered across the sky, oppressive both above and below. Through narrow breaks in the cloud, Hiccup could catch sight of the land beneath, snowbound right down to sea level and with the sea frozen beside. It looked like Berk in the depths of winter.

He heard Anna suck in her breath sharply behind him. “Is this all Elsa?” she said, the words almost lost to the wind.

“It must be.” He swallowed back the lump in his throat. “I didn’t know she was this powerful.”

“You… knew about her magic?”

“The first time I met, she shot ice at me,” he said. “Self-defence.” And not as bad as what he had done to her. “But nothing like this. Just… a handful of ice.”

This was so much bigger. More than a single iced-over room, more than an inch or two of snow in the Arena for the other dragon riders to play in. He knew that she had fought in the battle with the Red Death, but his memories of it were hazy, just images of fire cut through by ice. Surely even that, though, could have been nothing as huge as this. Arendelle alone was as big as Dragon Island, and the clouds were extending further still.

“My parents never told me,” said Anna. Hiccup frowned. He was sure that Elsa had told him, once, that she had done her ice magic specifically for her younger sister. “I can’t… why would they keep that from me?”

That part, at least, was easy to answer. “To protect you.”

He thought of Albrekt, whose mother had been cast from Arendelle just for healing herbs and folk knowledge, no magic even involved. And of the Silver Priests, who had power enough to make even the King of Arendelle beg for his daughter’s life.

Anna fell silent, and Hiccup went to twist in his seat to face her, when the wind buffeted them. “Whoa!” Hiccup grabbed hold of the saddle, relieved that he had clipped Anna into the harness as she caught hold of him. “It’s all right, Toothless.”

They were jostled again, and Toothless drew his wings in slightly as the wind became stronger and colder around them. It hurt Hiccup’s skin, crept through every layer that he was wearing, and the clouds began to seep and swirl around them like fog lifting off the sea.

“No, no, no! Come on, bud, we can do this.”

He trimmed Toothless’s tail, giving them more control, but it was all that he could do to keep them level in the air. Sharply, the air became so cold that Hiccup felt ice form on his lips, and had to close his eyes as the chill assaulted them.

Then Toothless jerked in the air, and all control went.

Anna screamed. Hiccup wasn’t sure that he didn’t join in. He frantically worked at the stirrup, then looked over his shoulder to see Toothless’s tail frozen, a lump of ice at the end of the dragon’s whipping body. There was ice clinging to the front of his wings, white rime on the connecting rod, and Hiccup for a brief wild moment considered having Toothless thaw the tail with his breath but no, the wool would burn and that would be no better.

They plunged through the cloud, time and distance impossible to gauge, cloaks whipping around them. All that Hiccup could do was cling on, one hand on Toothless’s saddle and the other grabbing the strap of the harness just an inch or two in front of Anna to stop her from pulling away, trying to control their descent and stop them from tumbling out of control.

Beneath the clouds, there was nothing but white. The glare of the snow filled his vision, and blood was pounding so hard in his head that he was not completely sure which way was up, but as trails curled from the tips of Toothless’s wings and the air sang around them, it was all that he could do to hold them as steady as he could as they plunged on, down to the unwavering ground.

 

 

 

 

 

It took Hiccup a moment to realise that it didn’t actually hurt that badly. He felt cold again, blisteringly so, and spat out a mouthful of slush as soon as he managed to get free of the surface of the snow again. Pushing snow from his face, he looked around wildly.

“Toothless? Anna?” His throat was sore; he must have screamed while they were falling. “Where are you?”

A flash of pink among the snow caught his eye, followed by an unfurling line of black, and Toothless drew up one wing to reveal that he was holding Anna to his chest.

“Oh, thank Odin,” said Hiccup. He managed to scramble to his feet and waded through the thigh-deep snow, reaching out a hand to the bewildered-looking Anna. “Hey, are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“I’m good,” she replied. She tried to sit up, only to be caught by the harness still clipping her to Toothless’s back, and fell on her back again. “That was _weird_.”

“Yeah, he’s a good catch.” Only now were flickers of his fall into the Red Death’s fire coming back, but this was all ice and snow, not the terrible heat that had seemed to scorch him from inside his very lungs, the smell of his own burning flesh. Although truth be told, the cold burned his fingers so badly that it was almost hard to tell the difference. “Safe hands. Or, you know, claws.”

Reaching down, he unclipped the harness from Anna’s chest and helped her untangle herself from her cloak and the woven leather strip, pulling her upright and letting her start brushing herself down before turning to Toothless.

“Hey there, bud,” said Hiccup softly. Toothless rolled onto his feet, sending a fresh flurry of snow across them both; Anna yelped, but Hiccup had given up on worrying about snow years ago. “Yes, all right, thank you. You’re not hurt, huh? Let me check your head.”

He carefully ran his hands up the lines of Toothless’s lower jaw, pressing just hard enough to be sure that the bones were not injured, then up and over his brow ridges, before passing one palm down the line of the nose. It earnt him a huff.

“Your gratitude astounds me,” Hiccup said. Satisfied that Toothless’s head was not injured – he could see from the way that the dragon moved that his wings and legs were fine, but head injuries were trickier in any species – he looked back to Anna.

It would have been easier if she hadn’t been looking at him quite so blankly. She wasn’t _afraid_ , and it had been her idea as much as his to come after Elsa in the first place, but they had just crashed from dragonback into a blizzard and had no idea where they were, and whether it was some modicum of trust or the fact that she had hardly set foot outside the castle in the last ten years, she was looking at him with an expression that was mostly hopeful, but had just a hint of desperation in it all the same.

“We need to get under some shelter,” he said. If not, they would only have a few hours, a time that could probably be extended by keeping close to Toothless but not indefinitely. “Come on.”

“Shelter? Out here?” Anna waved to the snow-flurried air around them. “We don’t even know where here is!”

“We’ll have to just to find a cave!” Hiccup shouted back, just as the wind howled more loudly around them again. Even through the snow, though, he could see Anna’s doubtful look, and shrugged with as wide a hand gesture as he could make. “Or any other sort of shelter! You’d be surprised!”

Anna groaned. “Fine!”

She stumbled in the thick snow, and Hiccup stomped over to take her shoulder, feet probing for solid ground. They were in the stringy edge of woods, pine trees strung out around them, and he headed off in the direction of the wind. There was nothing else that he could trust for a direction, but the wind had been coming from the north before and he could only assume that it was still coming from wherever Elsa was now.

The trees thickened around them, not just with smaller gaps between them but with thicker branches lower to the snow. The trees themselves were not so tall here, and the air felt thinner as he breathed – not enough to hinder him, but enough to be noticeable. How far north they had come, he did not know, but it was clear that they were at least part way up the mountain range that ran across the foot of the island. Heading into the wind seemed to still be taking them uphill as well, which meant they were probably on the southern slopes.

Through the snow, he caught a glimpse of a shadowy wall, a low cliff just visible in the lull between waves of snow, and he waved for Anna to head in that direction. He did not know as much about the geology of the south of the island, where it might be easiest to find caves, but when they came closer to the cliff they were at least a little more protected from the wind.

“We’re going to keep travelling, right?” said Anna. “We can’t just leave Elsa out in this storm.”

“Right now, I am more concerned about us now freezing to death, all right?” he said, anger sharpening his words. “Elsa doesn’t feel the cold. And as for being out in the storm, she probably _is_ the storm. Don’t you see?”

Flying had been supposed to get them past that, through the blizzard so thick that even Berkians would look at it and said that it was time to take shelter. His first thought was that the boat would not be a good place to be staying, but sharp behind it was the memory that the sea was frozen, and the hope that the boat would still be intact once it was done.

Without giving Anna a chance to reply, he turned and continued along the line of the cliff. He wanted to scream, but it would only be a waste of breath at best and a danger at worst. Unlike the stories about wildlings, which had been woven more from fable than from truth, some of the creatures that lived in the Wildlands were well-known, and known to be dangerous.

About others, they knew less. Those tended to be the ones that were more dangerous still.

He knew that Anna was scared for Elsa, and that being angry – with her, but mostly with the entire world right now – would not help. But he could not help it. He had tried to fly to Elsa’s aid, and crashed to the ground instead. The cold was a danger to them that it would never be to Elsa, and selfish as it might sound he did not want to die just now.

Besides, if he died then Toothless would be alone in the Wildlands with no-one around who could control his tail. And that wasn’t a thought that Hiccup wanted to entertain either.

Anna shouted something, but between the wind and not wanting to listen, Hiccup did not catch a word of it. He caught sight of a deeper shadow in the cliff and, shielding his eyes, sped up to push towards it faster. It proved to be the opening to a cave, a short narrow tunnel that quickly turned to pitch blackness beyond.

“There we go,” he breathed. Even if it was not much more than a hollow, they could bring down some tree boughs and lean them over the opening to make a shelter. He turned to Toothless, a hulking dark shape with his wings tightly furled against the wind. “Bud! Come on!”

Toothless covered the snow in leaps more than walking; perhaps that was easier for him, with his comparatively shorter legs. He stuck his head into the cave and sniffed, head twitching, then gave a strange high bark that was right at the edge of Hiccup’s hearing, almost painful.

“Whoa, whoa, what was that?” Unsurprisingly, Hiccup did not get an answer, as Toothless squirmed his shoulders into the tunnel – it had to be even more of a tunnel – and made the sound again. This time, Hiccup heard the echo of it, just a fraction lower than before. “Bud?”

But Toothless was already squirming into the cave, tail smacking Hiccup on the thighs. It may or may not have been deliberate. Hiccup glanced to Anna, shrugged, then gestured for her to follow; she hesitated for only a moment before following him in.

After the white of the outside world, the cave was black and startling. Coloured after-images sparked across Hiccup’s vision, and he took careful steps with his hands pressed to the walls on either side. Ahead, he heard the build as Toothless drew in his breath, and clapped his hands over his ears, turning to shout to Anna but not managing to before Toothless fired, the sound deafening in the space around them.

Even with his hands over his ears, it left him half-deafened, and turning back towards the light got rid of whatever night vision he might have been accumulating. Breathing unspecified curses, Hiccup rubbed his eyes, then peered into the cave as his vision became his own again.

There was a true cave there, a ragged hollow with an uneven floor and a jagged ceiling that cut away into the darkness. Toothless had fired against the wall, and it glowed faintly purple, just enough to catch the edges of the rocks and form the shape of the room.

“Well done, Toothless,” said Hiccup.

He sank onto one of the rocky ledges, shuffling back into something resembling a comfortable sitting position, and sighed. With some of the worst fear abating, he felt colder, and tiredness was seeping in. Sighing, he looked up to see Anna in the doorway, looking in faint wonder at the scene before her.

“Hey,” he said. She looked at him, and a touch of uncertainty came into her expression. Hiccup folded his hands on his knees, shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry that I shouted. It’s… not been the best day for any of us, have it?”

Anna flopped down on the rock opposite him, then winced. She reached down to rub her backside in a not particularly regal way. “Well, on one hand it’s been pretty terrible. But on the other hand…” she stilled, and it looked more abrupt on her than any movement ever did. “I found out my sister was still alive. Not like that’s something you do every day.”

“You really didn’t know?”

“I don’t remember much,” said Anna, with a shrug. She crossed her knees, one foot jiggling slightly in the air. “I mean, I was five, and I really don’t remember much from before that at all. Everything was normal, and then one morning I woke up and everyone was saying that my sister had been kidnapped, and I’d been unconscious for days. And… that was it. My sister was gone, and I was the heir.”

That had been two years before Hiccup had first met her, and two years was a long time when you were that young. Long enough for the story to become real, and for her to be past the trauma of it all.

“I cried for days,” she added. That, he had not known, and whatever words he might have been considering slipped away from his thoughts again. “I kept climbing into Elsa’s bed. When our parents moved her things to another room, to store them, I tried to break in there instead. Fell out the window and nearly broke my arm, one time.” She toyed with the end of her hair. “Learnt to pick locks. They sealed the door more, well, permanently after that.”

Without interrupting her, Hiccup shuffled closer to Toothless, who stretched out far enough for his saddle to be undone.

“I mean, I guess I just didn’t put it together?” Anna uncrossed her legs, then crossed them the other way. She accepted the costrel that he handed over, but simply dandled it in her hands, not paying attention to it. “The Silver Priests came to me not long after I became Queen. Days after my parents,” she said, and the one word had so much weight behind it that it felt almost tangible in the room between them. “Everyone was telling me things, asking me things, for, well, I don’t even know how long. It was all part of that.”

She took a deep breath.

“They told me that in the past, there had been trials for people who were suspected of having magic, or of knowing about it. Dangerous magic, I mean,” she added, emphasising the words by looking into Hiccup’s eyes. “But they said that they didn’t any more, that it was in the past. That there wasn’t even any dangerous magic in Arendelle now. We still had to be careful, that people didn’t try to bring magic to Arendelle, or to learn it, but they had turned the tide, and now they were repaying for what they had needed to do. Making it up to Arendelle.”

Anna paused, and Hiccup nodded in encouragement; he got the gist of what she meant, the balancing of some great set of religious scales. But he could not see what in the world could make up for the gods only knew how many years of murder.

“I thought they were talking about a few,” she blurted, gesturing with the costrel. “I mean, that doesn’t make it right, but I suppose in some ways I didn’t realise what they meant at all. They were just talking about protecting Arendelle from magic, and having to do some unfortunate things to do that, and… I never knew it was Elsa.”

Her voice cracked, and she pulled off one of her gloves so that she could rub her eyes.

“I mean, I thought they meant adults! People who had learnt magic and were doing it deliberately, but Elsa – Elsa didn’t even have magic! We were kids! How could a kid have magic, let alone be dangerous? How–”

“She did have magic,” said Hiccup, unable to hold back any longer.

“What?”

“She’s talked about it, about doing magic in front of you,” he said. Anna was looking at him as if he had declared that Elsa had wings. “When you were kids, she… you don’t remember this? She’s used her magic deliberately, only a few times, but she said that the last time she had done it was for you.” When Anna continued to look blankly at him, he leant back where he sat. “Maybe you were too young. Maybe whatever left you unconscious for that time sort of, well, took it from you.”

“Maybe.” She frowned. “I wish it hadn’t. I remember little enough with Elsa.”

“I’ve got time missing from before the Red Death still,” he said. “But we can find her. And then, I guess you can make new memories instead.”

A smile flickered across Anna’s face, softening the lines of her expression even in the slowly-dimming light of Toothless’s blast above them. They would need more firewood soon. Then she winced, and looked down at the ground again. “Yeah. And do something about the Silver Priests. They – they did this to other people, didn’t they?”

There was no point lying. “Yes. I don’t know how many. But I met a man whose mother was sent out of Arendelle for healing – not even magic, not like Elsa has. And they know it. From what Elsa says, it sounds like the Wildlings in general are because of the Silver Priests.”

Anna sat silent for a long moment, then she pressed her lips together and her gaze hardened, locking on Hiccup’s decisively once again. “I’ll deal with them,” she said. “I’m the Queen, and they only entered Arendelle by the grace of my ancestors. But first, we’re going to find my sister.”

“First,” said Hiccup, “we’re going to get something to cover the ground so we can sleep on it, and wait for the worst of the storm to pass. And then yes, we’re going to find Elsa.”

He kept to himself the momentary fear that the storm might not end. If after a year Elsa’s fear could break out and do this, he was not convinced that it would blow over in a few hours. Especially with no-one to help her find herself again. He had seen outbursts of fear from her, and magic along with it, but this was like nothing he had seen before.

“Will you tell me about her? While we’re waiting?” said Anna.

The good parts, at least. It was not his place to reveal the shadows that haunted Elsa still. “If you tell me what you remember of her,” he offered.

“Of course.”

 

 

 

 

 

Anna spoke first, under the light of Toothless’s occasional blasts to the rock to keep a faint light in the cave. They sat on the floor once it was covered in branches, some fallen and some dragged down with Toothless’s strength, to keep away from the chill of the stone.

She talked about their childhood, what bits of it she remembered, often things which Hiccup had heard from Elsa but which made more sense now. Sliding around polished wooden floor in their socks, trying to fence with rapiers taken from the armour lining the corridors, Anna climbing on Elsa’s shoulders to get their favourite cakes from the pantry. Anna’s first memory, of Elsa looking down into her crib. And her last of them together, of waking Elsa up because the sky was alight with colours.

“I used to say that the sky was awake,” said Anna. “I mean, I know now that it’s the aurora, but I kind of still like thinking of it as the sky being awake.”

“Everyone always gets nervous around Berk when the aurora’s up,” he replied. “Even when Gothi assures us that it isn’t Arvindell’s Fire. There’s a dragon that attacks when it is,” he added, when Anna tilted her head curiously. “But it only happens every eight to twelve years. Hasn’t happened since we were kids.”

“Were?” Anna snorted. “Hiccup, you’re a year younger than me.”

“And from Berk. Things are different there.”

“Well, as my council keeps reminding me, being sixteen doesn’t make me an adult yet. How do you guys get to be adults again?”

He glanced over at Toothless, feeling a pang. “It used to be that we killed dragons.”

“Oh…” Anna winced.

“But we’re changing that now,” continued Hiccup. “This year, instead of using the arena like we used to, we’re having the Academy. And there will be time teaching kids about the dragons and the end – hopefully – we will be getting them to interact with wild dragons themselves. And that will be the proof that they’re adults now.”

She nodded. “I remember you saying, earlier.”

“Sorry,” he said, with a sheepish smile. “I’m just really hoping it works, I guess.”

“I’m sure it will.” Anna picked up the roll of bread that Hiccup had passed her, and went to take a bite. It didn’t really happen, and she frowned at it before tapping it on the rock beside her. “Er, is this supposed to do that?”

Hiccup squeezed his roll; it gave slightly, and he swapped it for Anna’s. “Try that one. You shouldn’t need to build up your jaw muscles quite so much.”

With some effort, Anna managed to take a bite out of the second roll. “So,” she said around the bread. “You said that you’d tell me how you met Elsa. When you were talking before, it was mostly about the dragons.”

At the time, he had not realised that was the case, but in hindsight it was a little bit obvious. So much of Elsa was still bound up in pain that it was not his place to share. There were many good days, though, many steps that she had taken, and he knew that he could linger on those instead.

He had to be honest about how they met, though, even if Anna looked like she was considering punching him when he talked about how Elsa broke her ankle. But then he spoke about making the cast, about teaching her Northur, about how they had befriended Toothless together over the course of the previous summer. It became easier as he went on, talking about how Elsa helped to break him out of the prison – at least, how Astrid had described Elsa helping to break him out of the prison – and the bits and pieces that he remembered of her on Dragon Island, fighting alongside them and proving herself just as much of a Viking as any Berkian born and bred.

Anna sat entranced, eyes shining by the purple-white Night Fury light, and he wasn’t sure if she was happy or close to crying or both at times. But he spoke on, about Elsa’s language improving, about Snoggletog and how she had both given and received presents, skipping straight to Thawfest and the incredible few days that it had been. From the smile on Anna’s face, she agreed that Elsa even taking part was something to celebrate, that it didn’t matter where she had come in the sprints or shortbow or knattleikr so long as she had taken part, but when he was able to talk about her winning the rock-climbing it made Anna laugh with delight, clutching her hands to her chest and hanging on his every word.

“You know, I’m actually sort of not surprised,” said Anna, as he drew to his conclusion. “She was the instigator a lot of the time, when we were kids. The time we went sledding down the stairs on a tea tray? Absolutely her. Though it was me that knocked the armour over.”

“She always managed to look so neat, though,” Hiccup said. “I used to joke that she was a lady. I never thought…”

The words died on his lips. With the thought of Elsa at the top of the cliff in his mind, it had been easy to find the contrast amusing, the barefoot girl with the Wildling skills and the young woman in the long skirts and long sleeves, soft-voiced and unassuming. But they were one and the same, and it was only half a relief to hear Anna’s stories that made it clear that she had the same potential in her even as a child.

“It’s strange,” said Anna. “You know that even between us, we’ve only known her half her life, right?”

“Yeah,” he said softly.

Anna gathered her knees up to her chest, looking at her bread as if she was seeing something very different in it. “How much do you know about… the in-between?”

“I know that she was found pretty quickly when she went into the Wildlands,” said Hiccup. He shifted to sit cross-legged, and Toothless squirmed over to rest his cheek against Hiccup’s knee. “From what she said, it was pretty much immediate.”

He hoped so desperately that it had been. The thought of Elsa, eight years old and only knowing a castle life, alone in the Wildlands was a terrible one.

“She lived three years in a Wildling village. _The_ village, I think, really; _Kiirkylla_ I think it’s called.” Not long enough, but at least it was something. “She doesn’t talk about it much, but I think that’s where she learnt a lot of what she knows. And then,” he splayed his fingers against Toothless’s neck, feeling the warmth of his scales and the slow beat of his heart, and it still took him a moment to say the words. “They found out about her magic as well. And she left them.”

“When she was eleven,” said Anna.

“Yes.”

“But then she met you,” she said, and Hiccup could hear the brightness she was trying to push into her words. “And you didn’t fear her magic.”

They were alike in more than just how they looked, Hiccup supposed, seeing again the shadows of Elsa in the lines of Anna’s face. “Nor you,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As if it were going to be _that_ easy. Sorry, Hiccup.
> 
> In RL news, I've just got a new job, so I'm going to be shifting my posting schedule to Friday for the time being. Starting this Friday - so a shorter time than usual to the next chapter!


	6. Chapter 6

Hiccup awoke the next morning to quiet where the wind had been, and the faint sound of snoring. For a moment, he lay in the warm dark hollow of Toothless’s wing, the smell of dragon soothing and the drape of wing membrane over his shoulder like a tangible reminder that someone had his back. Then everything that had happened the day before started to creep back, and he had to suppress a rush of fear, immediate and bright, over Elsa.

Panic would not help. Concern, he could allow, might even be helpful. But panic made even the smartest of people do very stupid things, and Hiccup knew he did not have the best record of smart behaviour in the first place.

He tapped Toothless’s side, and with a rumble the dragon furled his wing again to let Hiccup sit up. The pine branches on the ground had kept them from the cold stone, and the heat of two humans and a dragon in the confined space of the cave had made it a bearable temperature, if somewhat stuffy. Absent-mindedly, he started strapping his foot back on, looking over to Toothless’s other wing to see one gloved hand and the end of Anna’s pigtail sticking out.

For someone who had grown up in a castle, Anna had taken surprisingly well to the idea of sleeping in a cave curled up next to a dragon. Hiccup had always thought the idea was amazing, but knew that not everyone would take it so well.

“Come on, bud,” he said quietly, running a hand over Toothless’s forehead.

Toothless huffed, lifting a lip for a moment, but then curled in his other wing to reveal Anna. She snorted and curled over, burying her head in her arm.

“Anna?” Hiccup lifted his voice slightly, then again when there was no response. “Anna? I think the storm’s cleared.”

“…breakfast sausages…” mumbled Anna, in Arendellen.

“Nope, more bread and cheese, I’m afraid. That snow we collected last night should be water by now.”

“Rrrrmm?” Anna rolled onto her back again and looked around blearily, wiping drool from her chin with the back of her hand, until her gaze fixed on Hiccup and her eyes widened and she shot upright. “Elsa!”

“We’ll get there,” said Hiccup. “First we need to get ready to get going.”

“I’m ready,” she said. She tried to push off the ground, got tangled in her skirt, and slammed to the ground again. “Fff! Still ready!”

He understood the urge, but falling face-first to the floor was not helping anyone. “More haste, less speed, I think.” As Anna managed to get to her knees, grab her hat, and pull it on, he relented slightly. “We might be able to eat in the air, though. Come on, let’s check out the outside world.”

Once again, stepping out into the world was almost blinding, but this time it was not with a storm. The air was still, crystal-cold, deep white snow on the ground and the trees, the clouds above pearl-coloured and glowing.

“Wow,” said Anna softly.

Hiccup rubbed his eyes as he stepped cautiously away from the base of the cliff. His feet sank into the snow, but the crunch of their footsteps was the only sound. No birds, no howling winds. It should have been less frightening than the whirl of the storm, but he still felt uneasiness in the pit of his stomach.

“Well,” he said finally. “At least this means we can fly again. Come on, Toothless, let’s look at your tail.”

He had loosened Toothless’s saddle before they slept, but tightened up the buckles again before exiting the cave. Now he crunched round, and Toothless obligingly swept up his fin, resting it on the snow. It was frosted white and frozen shut, barely more than a triangular lump of ice on the end of his tail.

“That does not look helpful,” Hiccup sighed. He crouched down, grimacing at the bite of the snow against his knees, and pulled Toothless’s tail up into his lap. He brushed away some of the looser rime, but already had a sinking feeling setting in as he realised that it had survived the night even in the warm cave. “Wow. She got you good, huh?”

He dug his fingers into the ice, trying to scrape it away, but it was hard and only scraped off on small flakes. Not wanting to further damage the fabric beneath, he went carefully, but suddenly his fingers pushed all the way through the gap between two of the metal prongs.

“Oh, Thor,” said Hiccup.

“What is it?”

Hiccup rocked back on his heel and rubbed a hand over his face, remembering the last time he had seen Elsa’s ice on fabric. “It ate it,” he said.

Anna frowned. “What?”

“The ice. It ate through the fabric, or… something. I don’t know how it works. But the fabric is completely gone.” He groaned. “I’ve seen it before; Elsa got panicked by some chocolate. Long story,” he added, with a wave of his hand, as Anna cocked her head. “But her ice formed on her clothes, and when the ice went there were holes in the fabric.”

“Do you have a spare?” There wasn’t much optimism in Anna’s voice, and it only took Hiccup’s silence to answer her. “ _Parrrlenks_.”

It was not a word that Hiccup had heard before, and he raised an eyebrow, but from the tone of voice he could guess the general meaning of it. With one last sigh, he dropped Toothless’s tail and got to his feet, brushing snow off himself.

“All right. Flying isn’t an option, so we need to walk. Elsa can only be walking as well, and she wasn’t carrying food like we are.” She knew how to gather it, certainly, and would be able to find it a lot quicker than Hiccup or Anna would have been able to, but surely it would still take her time along the way. “We go with the same plan – towards the cold. She’ll be there.”

“How are we going to find the coldest part now?” said Anna, with a wave of her gloved hand around them. “There’s no wind.”

Hiccup straightened up, eyes scanning the horizon visible above the trees and the low cliff on which they stood. Only one part of the sky was clear, around the tallest of the mountains, as if it had punched through the sky and pushed everything aside around it.

“There,” he said simply.

Following his gaze, Anna wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. It was at least a full day’s hard march, and might well take longer with the snow and the altitude. “The North Mountain?” she said, in Arendellen.

“North Mountain?!” he translated the words to Northur. “You do realise you’re on the southern end of the island, right?”

“It’s north of Arendelle,” said Anna, with a casual backhand to Hiccup’s chest. It connected with more force than he expected, and sent him staggering back a step. She didn’t seem to notice. “So, you really think she’s on the North Mountain?”

All that he had was his gut, but looking at the North Mountain standing proud of the range, with even the clouds held at bay, he nodded. “Let me guess: you could see it from your window when you were children.”

Anna blinked, looking surprised. “Yes.”

“She’s on the North Mountain.”

 

 

 

 

 

Walking through snow, even with a dragon to carry their things and no storm to struggle against, was hard work. At times, when they were in shallower snow, they were able to keep up something resembling a conversation, but when the slopes became so steep that they were almost more climbing than walking it was whittled away to muffled curses and regrets that Toothless was not able to assist them.

Hiccup found himself learning a surprising amount about Arendellen swearing along the way.

He spoke about dragons, surprising even himself that he knew enough to fill up the hours as they walked. The different species, their different fires, their eggs and hatchlings and how those hatchlings grew with time. Anna occasionally interjected with comments about ducklings, which seemed more like the Nadders than any of the others, and thought that the story of Stormfly adopting the orphan hatchlings was about the sweetest thing she had ever heard.

In return, she did not really have one topic to stick with. Anna spoke about learning to fight from the castle guards, about how she was doing as much as she could as a ruler while still not of age but how little power her council were able to give her, about how she had met Hans.

Hiccup dragged her back to the topic of Hans that evening, as the sun was setting and they reached another likely-looking cave. She had wanted to continue, sure that they could not be far away, but Hiccup had insisted they stop as the air grew even colder and the night closed in around them.

“It’s not going to do anyone any good if we get lost as well,” he said.

Anna grumbled, but acquiesced. He did voice his worries that Elsa could probably keep moving at night if she wished, with no fear of the cold and with knowledge of the Wildlands at her side.

“When did Hans propose, then?” said Hiccup. This cave was open enough for them to light a fire with wood scavenged from the last few trees as they climbed the slopes.

“My birthday,” Anna said, toying with her hair. The mention of Hans made her smile, and possibly blush beneath the effect of the cold on her cheeks. Hiccup wasn’t so sure about that.

“Last moon? Uh,” he groped for the Arendellen word, “ _month_?”

Anna nodded, smile widening. “It was so romantic. He supported me about the idea of having a proper party, but… that didn’t happen.” She pulled off her glove to reveal the slim gold band on her right hand. “It’s Southern Isles gold. They don’t mine much there, but…” she held it up for Hiccup to see.

Gold was gold, and Berk did not get enough of it for Hiccup to exactly consider himself an expert, but the quality of the ring looked good. He nodded. “Nice. Might not want to leave it out in the cold, though.”

“I know. I’ve been wearing it around my neck before, but,” she shrugged, putting her glove back on. “Where we were out and about yesterday. I wanted to wear it properly.”

“Congratulations, though,” said Hiccup. “Seriously. I hope that when you get back, you can figure this all out.”

“I’m sure he’ll understand. I mean, I get it, I suppose. He was just trying to uphold the law. Once I can get him to understand, he’ll probably help me with my council and the Silver Priests.”

“What’s the law like about magic in the Southern Isles?” said Hiccup. He didn’t think that he’d come across that himself, in the bits and pieces he had picked up over the years. Berk and the Southern Isles didn’t really interact. “Do they have laws about it?”

Anna frowned. “I suppose they must? He’s never talked about it, though. It didn’t really come up. But he knows that in Arendelle we have Arendellen laws. I mean, it’s not like he’s trying to stop me being Queen, is it?” she waved to herself.

On that, she had a point, and Hiccup laughed. “Yeah, I guess. It’s good, if he doesn’t share that, though.” It had been hard to get his head around, at first: in the Southern Isles, there were no princesses. There were only princes, and daughters of the King, who were generally raised in the houses of other Lords and married to their sons to ensure loyalties. “I mean, if you only had daughters or something.”

“We’re not exactly talking kids yet,” she said, with a slightly nervous laugh.

Sheepishly, Hiccup passed over some water. “Sorry. The thought just occurred. Oh gods,” he added, as an uncomfortable realisation dawned. “I did exactly what Dagur did to me.”

“Wait, who’s Dagur?” Anna almost took a sip, before catching herself. “Wait, _you’re_ engaged?”

“What? No! No, Dagur just thought – oh dear,” he groaned. There was an explanation for the ages. “Dagur is from the Berserkers, and came to visit this spring. He thought that I was married; I’m not!” he added, very quickly, as Anna’s eyes widened. “But there was a communication issue. And he did exactly the same thing, asked if we were having kids.”

“How did he get the idea you were married?”

“It’s something of a long story,” said Hiccup. There were many parts of it, at least, that could do with explanations along the way. “And I suspect that Elsa could tell parts of it more entertainingly than I can. She was there, saw it all. It was not my most graceful few days,” he admitted.

In hindsight, it was starting to be funny. If nothing else, the look of amazement on Dagur’s face would stay with him for years to come.

“You sound like you have some of the _strangest_ stories,” said Anna.

He really could not argue with that. “It’s been a long year.”

 

 

 

 

 

Despite Anna’s reluctance to make camp that night, Hiccup almost had to drag her out of the cave the next morning, as the sun was rising. True, nights were short, and he could feel exhaustion in his bones as well, but he was not sure he had met anyone worse with mornings than this.

Once it sunk in that it was morning, and they were going to finish searching for Elsa, Anna snapped awake. She even managed to make it through the increasingly-stale bread that Hiccup pulled out for breakfast while she was tightening Astrid’s boots back up.

“Come on! Let’s go!”

He exchanged a look with Toothless, who pricked up his flaps and chirped. That probably said it all.

The air was cold and clear, and as he looked down over the valley he could see the whole of Arendelle, and the land around as well. The mountains curved away to their east, cutting off the southern end of the island, and their foothills gave way to the gorge that marked the northern boundary of Arendelle. Beyond that lay the city itself, walled and curved around the bay that had treated it so well for so long.

It was harder to see the city than the nearer slopes; outside their ring of clear sky, snow was falling again. It was not so thick as to block the air altogether, but still enough to worry Hiccup, and he kept the observations to himself.

“How did Elsa,” Anna panted, “even get up here – by herself?”

“I told you the rock-climbing story,” said Hiccup.

He tried to get a handhold on the rocky slope that he was climbing. Slope was hardly a fair world; it was so steep that snow had only settled on a few of the outcrops, and most of it was bare. And slippery. Cursing beneath his breath, Hiccup did his best to get a foothold, and hoped that the snow beneath was soft enough if he did fall off. Twenty feet or so, and he was struggling.

“You know,” said Anna, from somewhere at the foot of the slope, “I kind of, um, have to ask.”

He hauled himself up, tried to get his left foot into a tiny hollow somewhere at around waist-height, and could have sworn that he was rewarded with sparks as it slipped. “Thor!”

“How did you, well, end up with the metal foot?”

Shoulders cramping as he clung to the wall, Hiccup paused. “Really? Now?”

“I’ve been meaning to ask, but it never really seemed like the right time!”

Hiccup was not sure how half-way up the wall with rope slung around him and struggling to get a hold was a good time, but he didn’t really have the breath to argue. He tried a different foothold, managed to get hold of it, and dragged himself up a precious couple of feet more. “Red Death,” he grunted. “Fell. Burned me.”

There was a long vertical crack in the rock. He had seen Elsa do this, but had been on the ground, not close enough to see how. Hiccup tried to slip his fingers into the gap, but the wool gloves slipped; he grabbed his glove with his teeth and pulled his hand free, hissing as he grabbed the cold, slippery rock with his bare hand. This time, though, he was able to feel the minute variations, get a grip, and start climbing upwards. It took much less time to finish clearing the distance, roll over the top, and flop onto his back in the snow, breathing heavily.

“Hiccup? Are you all right?”

“I’m good,” he shouted back. His voice didn’t particularly sound it, and he grimaced. “I’m good. Just let me… find somewhere to tie off.”

Looking around, though, there was nowhere. He was on a relatively narrow ledge, the rocky wall of the mountain curving away, no projections of rock or even the most stunted of plants to lash onto.

“Loki, inspiration would be great,” Hiccup muttered. He scraped away some of the snow at the edge, but could not find anything, then sighed and leant over the edge. “Toothless, bud, come on up here!”

“Wait, what?”

“I’ll have the rope down in a second,” Hiccup called. He whistled a couple of notes to get Toothless’s attention, then gestured him upwards. Toothless backed up a step, tensing and wiggling his rear end as he eyed up the cliff, then covered half of it in one bound, nails scrabbling for purchase, and in another leap was on the top. “Show off.”

He tied the rope to Toothless’s saddle with a sturdy knot, checked that all of the buckles were in place, and then threw it down over the edge. It took no time at all for Anna to join him, scrambling over the rocks with more enthusiasm than finesse and with Hiccup keeping an eye on the rope to make sure it did not fray against the edge of the rock.

“So,” said Anna, brushing snow off her front. “Red Death? I mean, you said…” she waved to his foot.

“Yeah. Dragons is… not that uncommon, really.”

“Oh, right. I mean, I’m sorry if I was rude, asking,” she said, rubbing her cheek with her knuckles. “But I just kept wondering, and it’s sort of hard to ignore when it’s waving around just above head height.”

Hiccup untied the rope from Toothless’s saddle and coiled it up again. “Well, it’s common enough on Berk. Although hopefully, with how things are with the dragons, there won’t be as many more after me. Huh, bud?” He gave Toothless’s flaps a ruffle as he folded the rope back into a saddlebag. “Can’t stop the logging or the fishing accidents though, they’re always going to happen.”

“I’m really sorry,” said Anna again. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“In Berk, the only way that could be considered rude is because you didn’t get me a drink,” he said, with what he hoped was a carefree grin. His foot really was the least of his worries right now. “Don’t worry. Though, don’t expect to get honest answers if you ask most people in Berk. Especially _after_ a drink. Making up outrageous lies is almost a Viking pastime.”

She huffed, sounding relieved. “It’s not really something we see in Arendelle. I mean, there are some people with no foot, or no hand, but pretty much everyone I’ve ever seen like that has been from Berk. I mean, not _like that_ ,” she said, catching the words, “just–”

“We’re pretty bad even compared to other Viking islands,” said Hiccup. “It’s fine. Really.”

He really hoped that he wasn’t going to have to ask her to drop it, before his other foot fell off out of embarrassment or something.

To his relief, Anna did let it drop, and with a final check that everything was firmly in place on Toothless’s back, they started walking again. There was still a lot of mountain above them, but Hiccup did not know how even Elsa might fare with thinner air than these. Anna’s breathing was already starting to labour, and Hiccup knew he was only fine because of the hours he had spent flying with Toothless.

Turning the corner of the path, he was not surprised for it to turn into a broader area, all but a snowfield. He _was_ surprised by the structures of ice that met him.

“ _Mothers and Fathers_ ,” said Anna, in Arendellen.

He could not even find that many words.

The snowfield was pristine, a smooth white sheet that spread a good two hundred yards from them. Beyond that, it rose up in a wall as tall as a house, glistening blue and flashing where it caught the sun through the ring of clear sky above them, stretching from the mountain on their right to the edge of the cliff on their left. And further still, only visible as a glimpse, rose fine blue twists of ice, hard to see against the clear sky but glittering where they caught the sun.

“Elsa,” Anna whimpered.

She broke into a run towards the blue wall, and Hiccup lunged to grab her but missed spectacularly. His feet went from underneath him, and he hit the snow, harder than he expected; it was only a couple of inches deep, nothing like that drifts in the city.

“Freyja,” he growled, promising in his head that any assistance from their goddess of fire would be repaid a thousand times over in offerings, possibly a pilgrimage, and even dedicating the whole practice of riding dragons to her. He scrambled to his feet again and ran after Anna, who was producing a turn of speed that he would not have expected after the last two days and in such thin air.

He reached her just as she slammed into a pair of gates at the centre of the wall. Made of the same blue – the same ice, it was so hard to think of it as such, but it had to be ice – the door was almost invisible against the wall, only the lines that framed it and a single heavy doorknob set on each door to show there was anything there at all.

“Elsa! Elsa!”

“Anna!” She was hammering on the door with one hand as Hiccup grabbed her around the waist, pulling her back. “How is that helping?”

“She must be behind it!” Anna’s hat was askew, her cheeks flushed, and she wrenched from his arms to wrap both hands around one massive doorknob and heave on it, heels sliding in the snow.

“Anna, Anna, listen to me,” he said. He really wasn’t sure how he was one determined to think things through. Either he had spent too much time with Astrid and her ability to plan, or he had spent too much time around the twins and their complete inability to do so. “I need you to _look at the amount of ice here_. And then take a deep breath. All right?”

He waited for Anna to take several deep breaths, her eyes locked on the huge ice doors, before her shoulders dropped slightly and she lowered her gaze.

“Whatever happens, we can’t go in running and shouting,” he said. “We need to make sure that Elsa knows that it’s us, and that we don’t scare her. All right?”

“We _need_ to get through that door,” said Anna.

There, she had a point. Hiccup nodded, released her shoulders once he was sure that she was not simply going to lunge for the ice again, and turned to look it over himself. The doors were at least ten feet high, the doorknobs large enough to grasp with both hands, but when Hiccup looked more closely he saw patterns formed in the ice. Fractals traced across the surface of the door, almost too faint to see, like the patterns of snowflakes, while the doorknob was more clearly carved the same stylised flowers that they had on the doorknobs in Arendelle castle.  He would not have recognised it without the castle on his mind, but once he saw it, he could not banish the thought.

Shading his eyes, he peered through the ice, seeing faint shapes and shadows on the other side.

“I think it’s barred.”

“Barred?” Anna stepped up beside him, shading her eyes in turn, and scanned back and forth. “I don’t see it.”

“Sort of… there, and there, the frame, and… it’s like the ones that we use in Berk to keep doors closed.” Most doors in Berk could not be barred both inside and out, of course, but most of them had not been adapted to try to keep Hiccup in. “They probably have them in warehouses in Arendelle, but Elsa picked that up in Berk. All right, there’s only one way we’re getting through that.” He glanced over at Toothless. “So much for quiet, huh, bud?”

“Are you going to…” Anna gestured from Toothless to the door, then paused for a moment, pursing her lips. “That sounds rather dramatic.”

“Yeah, that’s going to be one word for it,” he said. He grabbed her sleeve and tugged her backwards out of the way, gesturing for Toothless to sit still, then guided them so that they were behind Toothless’s line of sight. “All right. Hands over your ears, and don’t clench your teeth. Toothless,” he jabbed a finger towards the door. “Fire!”

It had been a long time since Toothless had put his full power into a blast. Hiccup saw it coming this time, the way that he drew a breath, the way that his eyes narrowed and his neck drew back, then in a heartbeat he punched out a blast of white-hot flame, cracking in the air like thunder.

The doors were broken in, one knocked to the ground and the other smashed open on its hinges. Shards of ice and clouds of steam filled the air, and Anna staggered back into Hiccup’s shoulder.

As quickly as it happened, it was over, and Toothless was sitting back on his haunches looking at Hiccup hopefully.

“Well done, Toothless,” he said. Toothless chuffed. Even his breath was steaming; the air was still and dry but so cold that it was not noticeable at first, not until you thought about the numbness of your skin.

“Whoa,” said Anna breathlessly. “That was…” she made a vague gesture with her hands, and Hiccup thought that he understood all the same. The feeling like a punch to his chest, the reminder of the raw power in the same creature that had let them sleep under its wings just the night before.

“Yeah.”

She nodded, still distant for a moment, then grabbed him by the arm and pulled him straight towards the ruined doors. “Anyway, come on. We need to find Elsa.”

 

 

 

 

 

They made it around the first three corners before realising that they were already in danger of becoming lost. It might have been Anna who realised first, drawing up short as the way branched in front of them.

“Is this a _maze_?” she said, disbelief dripping from her words as she slipped back into Arendellen, then caught herself. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” muttered Hiccup vaguely. It was probably good practice for him anyway. “But… I don’t know. We don’t really have them in Berk.”

While it would be possible to grow crops tall enough to cut into mazes, they did not really have the time in Berk. Far easier to just get lost in the woods, anyway. But the idea of mazes as a diversion, and of getting lost as a form of light entertainment and not, at best, training for later in life, was a strange one to them. “Do you have them in Arendelle?”

“We have the idea of them,” said Anna. “though not an actual maze. But there were these fairy stories our mother used to read us, and one of them had a maze, to keep some monster in.” She frowned, rubbing at her temple. “One time… I half-remember. Elsa made a maze for us to play in. It was all white. Sheets, probably. Hnn,” she grunted in pain, the touch to her head becoming an outright clutching.

“Anna?”

“It’s fine,” she said, voice tight. “It’s… headaches. I get them. There, gone,” she said, just a little breathless as she looked up again. Her right eye was watering slightly, and reflected the blue gleam of the walls around them. “But – yeah. Elsa knows what a maze is. I just hoped that she thought to put an exit on this one. Can we have Toothless burn through?”

“Six shot limit,” he reminded her. “Either we’d be moving slowly, or we’d have to do it in five walls or fewer. But if going through is going to take too long,” Hiccup looked at the top of the wall, then crossed over to Toothless and gestured for him to stay still. “Maybe we can go over.”

“What?” said Anna.

Hiccup put his booted foot on Toothless’s head – they had done this once or twice, usually to reach up trees, but never when Hiccup’s hands were leaning on a wall of ice. He steadied himself as best he could and clicked his tongue. “Come on.”

Toothless raised his head, sending Hiccup lurching against the wall, then pushed up onto his hind legs. There was something highly disconcerting about sliding up a wall of ice, and he was relieved that it was Toothless, not anyone else, who was giving him the assistance. As the top of the wall came within reach, he wrapped his hands over it, only for pain to slash across his skin.

With a yell, Hiccup recoiled back, looking down to see blood across his palms. There was only a split second for him to see it before his balance went, and then he was grappling with the air, feeling that stab of panic that never came when he deliberately slipped from Toothless’s saddle to fall through the air.

“Hiccup!”

With a grunt, Toothless lunged up and slammed against him, enfolding him in strong arms and bearing them both to the ground with soft thuds. The landing was cushioned with dragon, and Hiccup waited until Toothless released him before rolling out and back to his feet again.

“I’m all right,” he said to Anna, even as he actually looked at his hands. His gloves were shredded, ragged holes in them, and his palms looked as if they had been ground down. It already hurt a lot less than it looked like it should, but that might have had to do with how the blood was already freezing over like scabs. “Ouch…” he said anyway.

“So much for going over the walls,” said Anna. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Unless you’ve been hiding some wine away, to wash it clean, I don’t think so. Doesn’t hurt that much now, anyway.”

Anna did not look like she believed him, but it was true. Whether the cold air or the cold fear creeping through him, something was stopping the pain from being too harsh. “Well,” she said, voice artificially bright, “I guess that means we’re going to have to solve this maze properly. I don’t suppose you were up there long enough to see the exit?”

“Didn’t even have time to look over the wall,” said Hiccup, now cursing himself for doing so. He flexed his fingers experimentally, but they moved fine, and he put the thought aside. “I don’t suppose you can remember the solution to the maze that Elsa made for you?”

“If it were that simple…” she trailed off. “Come on, where’s that knife of yours? We can just mark the walls with arrows to show where we’ve been.”

“Good idea.” At least one of them was able to come up with them. He drew his knife, hands turned clumsy, and Anna plucked it from him. “Careful with that!”

“Oh, come on, the guards have taught me how to fence. I think I can handle this.” Anna took a hearty stab at the wall, but it more collided than cut, and she drew back blinking in surprise. Only a tiny chip had come out of the ice. “Well, that was harder than expected.”

It had to be the magic. Even the ice bought in by the trader was not this flawless, no air bubbles nor ripples to distort it. If they stood on opposite sides of the thick walls, Hiccup thought, they might have still been able to see each other through them. “Doesn’t need to be a poem. Just a cross will do,” he said aloud.

With some difficulty, Anna managed to carve an X into the ice, and a line pointing in the direction they were heading. From the set of her jaw and the tension in the arm as she worked, Hiccup suspected that she might be fearing more than her words were letting on. “There,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, on the bright side, nothing has exploded that wasn't supposed to. Let's go with that.
> 
> Welcome to the new schedule!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning note for this chapter: words/actions that could seem suicidal in nature; minor original character death.

The sun rolled gently across the arc of the sky as they made their way through the maze, with any number of false starts and dead ends to consume their hours. It was hard to tell exactly how far they had travelled, but at least the rock wall of the cliff let them know what direction they were moving in, and slowly but surely the distant ice spires of whatever lay beyond the maze crept closer to them. The maze was more dead ends than loops, for which Hiccup was thankful, as each time they only had to retrace their steps back and take the next turning instead. Going around in circles might have been too much.

More than once, they heard groaning in the distance, and shadows moved through the ice; Toothless would hunch up, growling low and dangerous, and Anna would hold Hiccup’s knife out in front of her in what she probably thought was a warning gesture. But then it would pass, and they would continue onwards, cautious for a short while until it became to exhausting to continue being so.

The flawless blue ice gave away to frosted white, making the maze feel less ghostly but all the more confining, and as the sun started to slide down the sky again Hiccup could not help a momentary fear that they would be stuck in there through the night, that they were truly lost or that Elsa had made the maze utterly and impassably deep. His palms throbbed with cold, but the frozen blood cracked when he flexed them and trickled fresh onto his fingertips, painfully hot on his skin.

“Look,” said Anna, grabbing his arm. He had transferred the sheath for his knife to her some time ago, and luckily she had both hands free now. “The walls!”

He looked at them blankly, mind ground down by the claustrophobic white and the eternal, featureless walls. “What?”

“They’re getting lower!”

At that, Hiccup woke up a little. He peered at the wall, turning back to compare it with the ones behind them, and wasn’t completely convinced. “Maybe?”

“They are. Come on!”

With renewed vigour, she took off again, and Hiccup had to hurry to catch up with her before she slashed a cross into the next wall and turned the corner. For the first couple of turns, he struggled to believe it, but before too long he had to admit that the walls were indeed creeping down, inch by inch. The corners and doorways that they passed seemed a little less sharp in their definition, and Anna’s carvings into the ice seemed to come easier.

As if Elsa was tiring, when she had created this. Hiccup was not sure what to think of that.

Bit by bit, the walls became lower, now solid white and with the very occasional, faint crack in the surface. The spires of the building ahead of them loomed ever higher. Finally, Anna’s footsteps sped up, and she jogged down the snowy corridors, Hiccup trailing behind her with his palms aching and his left foot threatening to slip on the ice. Finally, she turned one last corner, and Hiccup reached it just in time to see Anna slam her fist into the wall.

“ _Parlenks_!” she shouted, voice ringing on the ice. By now, the wall was barely eight feet high, but solid white, and when Anna stabbed it, right-handed, the Gronckle iron dagger sank in all the way to the hilt. With a snarl of frustration, she pulled it out again. “Elsa! Elsa, it’s only us!” Her voice cracked. “Please, let us in…”

From a shout, her voice withered to nothing, and she leant her forehead against the ice. The path on which they stood stretched all the way to the mountainside opposite them, surely the full width of the snowfield. Could it be that Elsa had never put a door on this side at all?

“Come on,” said Hiccup. He walked over to Anna, and tugged at her sleeve. She batted him away, still clinging to the hilt of the knife, as a choked sob ran through her. “Anna. Come on.”

“Eleven years!” she rounded on him, anger flashing now. “Eleven years, all that I have wanted to know is where my sister is. Does she remember me? Does she know about our parents? Does she even know who she _is_? And what if,” she paused, lower lip trembling, and her eyes fell. “What if she doesn’t want to know?”

“I promise you,” said Hiccup. “She never stopped missing you. She loved you more than she could find words for. But she still has this fear,” he waved around them generally. It was still more than he would like to have to say, but Anna needed to know, at least that much. “You see? She still struggles. And that is exactly why we need to find her.”

It wasn’t a question of _if_ Elsa wanted to see Anna again. After hearing Elsa talk about her for so long, he could not doubt it. Even if he was not sure that Elsa would admit it herself.

“Now back up, so Toothless can blast down this wall,” he added.

With a soft cry, Anna flung her arms around his shoulders and hugged him, almost knocking him backwards with her enthusiasm. He heard her snuffle slightly into his shoulder, then sniff, and by the time that she pulled back her eyes were dry and her smile mostly steady. “Sure,” she said. “I’d like to see a dragon in action again.”

When he had retrieved the knife, they backed up around the corner, and Hiccup leant around to tell Toothless to fire at the wall. This time, it was not quite at its full power, and was aimed higher, destroying most of the wall and sending chunks tumbling down, but leaving a ragged waist-high remnant behind. Beyond, the snowfield opened up again, no more walls to the maze, and with a relieved laugh – that had in it just a hint of hysteria – Anna made immediately for the entrance. Hiccup made sure to run a hand over Toothless’s head on the way past, with a grateful murmur. The dragon rumbled in reply.

He climbed over the last of the wall, and stood on the open field. The sight that met him took his breath away.

The snowfield in front of them was smooth, flawless white, not the slightest ripple or the smallest footprint to disturb it. From the centre rose a huge building of ice, easily as large as the Great Hall or Arendelle’s largest buildings, but made up of twisting branches of ice that wove over and through each other in irregular patterns. All of them bristled with spines, glittering points in the sunlight, the ones at the base of the branches as long as a man, becoming smaller but no less daunting as they rose away. The branches became narrower as they rose, forming a twisting shape like a flame, until only their highest points pierced the sky.

“What is that?” said Anna.

Hiccup was not sure that there were words for it. “That’s Elsa’s magic,” he said simply, and it was nowhere near enough.

 

 

 

 

 

The snow crunched under their boots as they made their way towards the building. There was not so much a door as a twisting gap between the vines, dark against the ice, and even though Hiccup was walking carefully on the uneven surface, it was Anna who fell behind. He stopped, and turned to face her.

Fear was written across her face. Awe as well, no doubt at the display of magic in front of her, but fear bone-deep and childhood-deep, slowing her steps but not able to stop them altogether. She did not look at him, eyes fixed on the entrance, and he let her draw ahead as they reached it. There was no door in the gap, and from closer the way was not much darker than the world outside, just lit in lilting blue by the ice around it.

“Elsa?” said Anna quietly. Her voice echoed weakly down the short corridor, formed of more twisting vines that formed an almost triangular space around them. Thorns branched from these as well, a handspan long, and when Hiccup tested the end of one with his fingertip it was wickedly sharp. “Elsa?”

Hiccup paused at the doorway, a glint of dark blue in the snow catching his eye. He knelt down, brushed away the snow, and carefully picked out the brooch that Elsa had been wearing at her throat that morning. It was painfully cold to the touch, but undamaged, and he carefully brushed off the snow as he stood up again and followed Anna down the corridor.

After only a few paces, the corridor suddenly bloomed out into a vast, dazzling hall. Anna stopped in her tracks, and Hiccup paused still in the doorway, leaning against a non-thorned part of it as his knees felt weak beneath him.

Inside, the room glowed blue, as if the sunlight had been spread through every part of the ice around them. The ceiling above them vaulted high, walls made up of the same twisting thorns. Six pillars supported the huge ceiling as well, as large around as oak trees but far taller, trunks bare until their upper reaches, where they branched out to support the arch above them. They, too, held the strange blue light in them, clearer than glass and seamless.

There were no windows; with the light of the ice, they were not needed. The floor beneath them was pure ice, shimmering darker than the walls as if there were colours trapped deep inside it, an almost snowflake-like pattern dividing it into six equal parts, one pillar in each.

For a moment, he did not recognise the slumped, frost-white shape in the centre of the huge room. Then he realised that there was a suggestion of blonde hair there, something that might have been skin, and his heart lurched in his chest.

“Elsa…”

It came out breathless, throat too tight to shout. Anna’s gaze snapped down from where it had been tracing the terrible beauty of the room around them, and she immediately tried to run forwards. Her feet slipped on the ice, but she caught herself before falling altogether, and before Hiccup could even think to move she was halfway across the room.

“Elsa!” Anna shouted, voice lost to the huge room.

Elsa _flinched_. It was the last thing that Hiccup could have expected, and he did his best to run across the ice as well, just as the floor in front of Anna erupted upwards. It wove up like growing brambles, sped up as if years were packed into seconds, until a wall of thorny ice stood between them. Anna managed to stop before hitting the wall, and put one of her hands carefully in a gap in the thorns, peering through.

On his left, Hiccup saw Toothless circling around, hunched low and feet silent on the ice, but another burst of ice spread out in front of him, the same brambles, the same thorns, and he sprang back with a snort.

“It’s all right, Toothless!” Hiccup shouted. “Just stay back.”

Slowly, Elsa looked up. She was kneeling on the floor, her arms wrapped around her chest, tiny among the great vault of her magic. Her eyes were red, with deep shadows beneath them. What had been her clothes had been entirely consumed by ice, white covering her back, clinging to her arms, trailing across the floor where her skirt should have been.

“You should not have come,” she said quietly. Hiccup barely heard the words.

“We want to help, Elsa,” Anna said. “Please, just let us, I…” she trailed off, a look of helplessness flitting across her face before she tucked it away again. “We can help. You don’t have to do this.”

“You were meant to let me _go_ ,” said Elsa. Her voice darkened, and she bowed her head again, revealing chips of ice sparkling in her hair like the ghost of a crown. “But now, you see. This is why you must leave.”

“We’re not leaving you,” said Anna.

Elsa looked up to meet her eyes, then slowly rose to her feet. What had been white rime fell away around her, vanishing into the air, to reveal glittering blue ice beneath. It formed a tunic that fell to her mid-thighs, skin-tight, leaving her shoulders bare above long, fitted sleeves; there was a thick belt of ice, even a blocky shape like a buckle in the centre of it though there were no breaks in the ice itself, and leggings that covered to her ankles and left her feet bare against the floor.

“It is beyond me,” she said. Tears glittered in her eyes again, but she swallowed and lifted her chin, arms falling to her sides. “It has always been beyond me. It is time now that I take it away. That I make you safe.”

“What?” Anna’s jaw dropped. “No! We just _found_ each other, Elsa!”

“I know,” said Elsa, and for a moment there was trembling warmth in her voice again. “Hiccup is right – I held on to my memories of you, and now I have found you. Now I know… that you are alive. Thank you,” she added, turning her gaze on Hiccup. There was something lost in her eyes, but something peaceful as well.

“This,” Anna gestured to them both, “this is a beginning, not an end! Come back with me to Arendelle, and we’ll make this right. I know now what happened, I’m sorry, but we can make things better!”

“How?” It came out a cry that rang from the ice around them. “How can you make me better? Make me right? Look at this, Anna! This cage!”

Elsa swept her arm to encompass where they stood, and Hiccup looked again. This time he saw the unbroken walls, and the great spines of ice, and the room so open that nothing could be hidden inside it.

“This is the magic that lives in me, Anna.” Elsa sounded like she was in pain, like there was a knife twisting in her gut, and all that Hiccup want to do was _make it right_ and gods help him, he did not know how. “This is what was banished. This is what should have died.”

“No! Don’t say that! _Never_ say that!” said Anna. “You’re my _sister_ , Elsa. Don’t you remember what we said? That there was nothing we could not do, together?”

“We were children!” Elsa choked on laughter. “And you, Anna, you of all people should know what I can do, after I almost…”

He could see her trying to speak, trying to find some words, but they would not come. The thorns of the wall separating her from Anna grew sharper, longer, until with a gasp Anna had to pull her hand away.

“After you almost _what_?” said Anna.

This time, the tears fell from Elsa eyes. “After I almost killed you,” she said.

Silence surrounded them, so thick that it pounded in Hiccup’s ears and pressed against his sternum. Anna sagged in place, as if she was going to fall, but caught herself by force of will alone and never moved her eyes from Elsa, never let them waver.

“What?” she whispered.

Elsa looked at her for a long moment, breathing raggedly, as one arm moved across to rub the other bare wrist. “You do not remember,” she said finally, tone conflicted. She went as if to speak more, hesitated, then squared her shoulders and curled her free hand into a fist. “We were playing, as children. I struck you with my magic. Our parents took you to the Silver Priests, and they said you would most likely die. That was when they sent me away.”

Anna shook her head, lips working but no sound issuing from them.

“I thought I killed you!”

The words were like a stone shattering through ice. And they were _wrong_ , just slightly off; Elsa spoke better Northur than that, but she spoke as if it were _real_ , not something that almost was.

To her, he realised, it had been.

“But you didn’t,” said Hiccup, and Elsa whipped round to look at him, shying away a step. He would not have blamed her for forgetting about him. “Anna is here, and she’s fine. The Silver Priests were wrong.”

“They’ve lied to me,” put in Anna, voice bitter. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they lied to you too. That they knew I’d get better.”

“Your hair turned white that day,” said Elsa. She raised one hand, reaching out towards Anna, then caught sight of her own fingers and curled it back to herself once again. “I saw it change. They said I killed you. They said…”

She turned away from them, wrapping both arms across herself and hunching over, a glittering pale figure lost in the huge room. As soon as she turned away, Hiccup gestured for Toothless to come up to them.

“Slow burn, bud,” he breathed, with a gentle hand on Toothless’s forehead.

The dragon responded instantly, with a low fire that melted down the icy briars in front of them. Hiccup pushed Anna through the gap first, then stumbled through after her, but at the sound of his foot scraping on the ice Elsa spun again, skittering back a few steps.

“We aren’t leaving without you, Elsa,” said Anna. “And talking about some accident from when we were kids isn’t going to change that.”

“It’s going to be all right,” Hiccup added. “It always is, isn’t it?”

She looked at them both like they were mad. “You come to _this_ ,” she waved again, hand shaking, “you see this magic, and you think it can be all right? Go home, Anna. Hiccup. Go home, and… just tell our parents I’m alive.”

She didn’t know. Of course, she didn’t know. It had been nearly two years now since King Agnarr and Queen Iduna were lost at sea, their boat destroyed by an unseasonal storm. Hiccup had not seen Anna between that time and now, but alongside the official letter of condolence his father sent, he had made sure there was a personal letter sent between what he hoped he could call friends.

Two years might have been a long time in some ways, but it was still enough to make Anna sway where she stood. Perhaps there was something in her silence that made Elsa stop where she had been about to turn away.

“Anna?”

“I can’t,” said Anna. “It’s… it’s just you and me, now.”

Pinpoints of snow formed in the air around them, not even falling but slowly, slowly increasing in size. “I’m sorry,” said Elsa quietly. This time, when she rubbed her hands together, flakes of ice fell from her skin. She looked Anna over for a few long seconds, brow furrowed and lips trembling, then with a shuddering breath, the ghost of a sob, turned away. “I am so sorry.”

He recognised the guilt on her. “None of this is your fault, Elsa,” said Hiccup. “But… it’s times like this that family are important. That you need – that _we_ need to stick together.”

“Elsa, please,” said Anna. “Come back. We’ll sort this out, one thing at a time. But as long as we’re together, we can do it. I know we can.”

Tears ran down Elsa’s cheeks, dripping from her jaw but freezing before they hit the ground. The snow around them was ruffled by a faint wind that seemed to reach down from the upper reaches of the room. “Anna…” she shook her head. “I am sorry that I must leave you like this. Go to your home. Be happy.”

“Happy?” Anna looked at her as if she had gone quite mad. “How could I ever be happy when I know you aren’t?”

“I know you live,” said Elsa. Again she shifted as if she was about to reach towards Anna, arm unfurling, then caught herself and drew away. A smile found her lips even as she cried still. “That is happiness.”

“You’re coming with us,” said Anna.

“No.”

“Elsa…” said Hiccup.

“We aren’t leaving you behind.” Anna started to stride towards her.

“No!” Elsa cried. The snow around them suddenly swirled, thickening to sharp flakes in the air as it swept up around Elsa in a rotating pillar. It looked like a waterspout of snow, then as Elsa wrapped her arms around herself, bowing her head, the snow wrapped around her as well, in a thickened bulge around her upper body.

Hands clenching into fists, Anna marched forwards.

Elsa looked up, expression hardened. “You are leaving.”

She thrust her hands out, palms to the ground in front of her. Ice blasted from her hands, and Hiccup was not sure that he had ever seen her magic like this, focused and _intentional_. The magic was a stream of white, and when it hit the ground it grew into sheets, flat sides facing out towards Anna and Hiccup.

Everything was so bright that it took Hiccup a moment to realise that sheets of ice were sliding fast towards them, grating on the ground beneath the rushing sound of the snow. Anna skidded short to avoid sliding into one, then stumbled backwards as it continued advancing on her.

“Elsa, please!” Anna shouted, over the crunching advance of the ice.

Elsa was hanging her head, her shoulders shaking, sobs lost beneath the sound of the ice. Anna stumbled back into Hiccup, who did his best to catch her before scrambling back in turn. Finally, the ice stopped, a wall between two pillars, and Elsa dropped her hands and looked up at them with desperation pouring off her.

“You have to go!” she shouted. Her voice was distorted by the ice around them. “It is not safe.”

“And what? Abandon you on a mountain?” Anna shouted back. “No food, no water, no _people_ around? Of course it isn’t safe to leave you here!”

“It is not safe for me to return!” A sort of desperate anger rose in Elsa’s voice. “It is not safe for you, or for me! How can this,” she gestured around them, “ever be safe?”

“This is ridiculous,” said Anna, voice dropping until even Hiccup could barely hear her. She looked over at Toothless, raised her chin, and perfectly imitated Hiccup’s stance and flick of his arm as she pointed to the ice. “Toothless, fire!”

Perhaps Toothless was too well-trained, too responsive. Before Hiccup could stop him, he arched up and fired into the ice, the blast passing between Anna and Hiccup so close that he could feel the punch of heat from it, feel as much as hear the boom in the air. The wall shattered, cold water and shards of ice exploding outwards and showering them both, but with steam still in the air Anna climbed through the new gap and ran straight across the ice.

“Anna!” Hiccup shouted. There was a wild fear in Elsa’s eyes, a fear that Hiccup had seen before – but not on humans, not outside a hunt.

But Anna ignored him. She ran right up to Elsa and grabbed her bare forearm, even as Elsa tried to jerk away. “You’re coming home as well.”

“Please–”

“We can fix this, _together_ –”

“No!”

Elsa screamed, and wrenched away. The last thing that Hiccup saw was a flash of light before Toothless slammed against him and bore him to the ground, so hard that this time he knocked his head against the ice. He saw stars, and a blue-white flare beyond Toothless’s wings, ghostly through their shadows, but within seconds he was scrambling out again to look up and round.

The whirling snow around Elsa had stilled, frozen in the air in huge flakes. Anna had been knocked to her knees, one hand to her chest, but as Hiccup and Toothless ran over she got unsteadily to her feet again.

“No…” Elsa whimpered.

“You have to…” Anna trailed off, wavering, then looked up. “You have to come back.” She rubbed her chest with her hand, breath hitching.

Elsa looked round with terror in her gaze as Hiccup drew level with Anna; it made him stop in his tracks. When Anna wobbled again, he caught her weight, seeing flakes of ice falling from her cloak as he did so. There was fresh blood on his hands, and he must have been clenching them without realising.

“I’m sorry,” said Elsa. She sobbed again, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m sorryI’msorry _umasulliirenumasulliiren_ –”

“It’s nothing! It’s just _cold_ ,” said Anna defiantly, even though she was still leaning on Hiccup.

“You don’t understand.”

“Then make me understand!”

“When I was in the Wildlands,” said Elsa, between her tears, “a man attacked me one night. I had food, a tent… I was a target. When he tried to knock me out, I struck him with my ice.” She paused, shaking, and had to force out her words. “He died.”

“What?” Anna breathed.

Elsa closed her eyes, as if blocking them out would make it easier. “I watched him turn to ice. I watched him die. My powers killed him – _I_ killed him. Don’t you see?” She turned on them sharply, reached out to Anna with both hands, then caught herself and backed away again. The floor darkened beneath her feet. She took several fast, deep breaths, then looked up with a sudden flare of hope in her expression. “The Silver Priests. They saved you once. You must go back to them.”

“After what they did to you?” Anna sounded disgusted. “No!”

“Anna, please. Please, let them save you.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” said Anna. “I just…”

She trailed off as a violent shiver ran through her, almost knocking her from her feet again. As she straightened up, she ran the back of her hand across her forehead, and Hiccup could have sworn that there was ice at her hairline before she brushed it away.

“You have to go!” Elsa snapped. The snow behind her thickened and whirled in on itself again, almost pillar-dense now. “Please, Anna, do not let it be that I killed you again!”

Her strength must have failed her; she fell to her knees with a cracking sound that resounded around the hall. The floor shuddered beneath them, and Toothless growled as deep, black cracks radiated out from where Elsa knelt.

“Elsa!” Hiccup shouted, but she ignored him, burying her face in her hands and giving over to her tears.

The snow engulfed her completely, until he could only see flickers of her silhouette through the white, and the cracks spread out across the floor. When they reached the six columns that supported the hall, they leapt up them, chasing each other across the ice and snuffing out the blue light that had been there. The hall darkened. Great groaning sounds filled the air, along with the rushing of the wind, and the whole structure began to tremble around them.

“We have to go,” said Hiccup, grabbing Anna’s arm and pulling her towards Toothless.

She tried to wrench her arm away. “I’m not leaving her!”

With a great rending sound, a chunk of ice fell from the ceiling above them and crashed down on the floor only yards away. Smaller pieces were raining down as well, and snow was starting to fall thicker and harder.

“We don’t have a choice,” he said. He waved Toothless to their side, grabbed the safety strap, and snapped it onto the harness that Anna was wearing. She gave a shout of protest, half-lost beneath the sounds of the ice around them, and fumbled at the harness with her gloved hands, but Hiccup grabbed her around the waist and all but threw himself into the saddle. It was hold on or be held, and Anna scrambled to sit astride the saddle as Hiccup held on tight, pushed them low, and urged Toothless on with the slightest nudge of his knees.

Toothless turned, and then they were running.

 

 

 

 

 

The building screamed around them. Cracks were still spreading across the floor, the light of the ice fading, as Toothless raced down the narrow hallway and burst back outside again. It was not sunlit as it had been when they entered; thick blue-black clouds had gathered above them again and snow was falling in huge, sticky flakes.

They skidded in the snow outside the door of the building, Hiccup turning to look and finally sitting up, taking his weight off Anna. She pushed upright as well, growling something beneath her breath, then inhaling sharply as they saw one of the spires above them break and fall, crashing down over the cliff and tumbling away.

“Elsa! We have to help her!”

She had to be all right, thought Hiccup desperately. He still had the vivid image of her, engulfed in flames and emerging in ice; surely all that this ice could do was surround her. All the same, he was preparing to turn them back in, when a deeper rumbling cut through the noise, and he looked up the mountain slopes to see them roiling and tumbling down, a great deep wall of white.

“Avalanche,” he said, and then it became all the harder not to panic because he knew what they could do, had heard the stories of bodies dug out of avalanches and those rare, marvellous tales of people found alive but battered, drinking snow to survive. If it was not the snow that killed, it could be the rocks and trees that it carried.

Something told him that if anyone could survive one, it was Elsa.

“We have to go,” he said firmly, pulling Anna’s hands away from where she was trying to pull the harness off.

“But–”

“She wouldn’t let you die,” he snapped, “and I won’t either.”

He clipped his foot into Toothless’s stirrup and got a good grip on the harness, wishing that he had thought to fit two safety straps when he had started taking people for rides. But to clean up a phrase that Gobber used, wishing in one hand and spitting in the other would let you see which one got full first. All that he could do now was hang on with hands and arms and legs.

He nudged his knee against Toothless’s side, and turned him out to face the cliff, trying to picture the shape of the North Mountain as they had climbed. He had a sinking feeling there was sheer cliff below them, dropping down to below the tree line again, but there was nothing that he could really do about that.

“Come on, Toothless,” he said softly, pressing his hand against the dragon’s shoulder to feel the warmth of his skin. “We might not be able to fly, but we might just be able to glide.”

The words were lost beneath the ever-nearing avalanche, and Hiccup felt the snow on which they stood beginning to shake and slide. Somewhere in the wind, there might have been a scream, but he had no time to think on it as he urged Toothless onwards, running full-pelt towards the edge of the cliff, Anna screaming an oath that might have been at the avalanche or at him and slamming her fist against his, feeling the coil of Toothless’s muscles beneath him and pushing low again, and then the mighty punch of the air as Toothless’s wings unfurled and they took off again.

The whistle of the air hit them, so bitterly cold that it felt scalding, and Toothless spread his wings to their fullest and just held them there, gliding rather than flying even as the turbulent air pushed down ahead of the avalanche buffeted around them. It felt as if they had no speed at all, not compared to how he could fly, but the air was still cutting-sharp as they dropped quickly through the air. Trees loomed up from beneath them, and Hiccup was just wondering whether they could land in one of them when something hit Toothless’s tail, and they were sent pinwheeling.

For the second time in no time at all, they went tumbling down through the air, but this time there were chunks of ice slicing through the air around them, billowing powdered snow reducing the world to their small sphere, branches intruding on them to knock against shoulders or knees or Toothless’s chest. Toothless was forced to tuck in his wings to avoid the branches, but it only made them drop faster, the knocks of the branches more painful and holding on getting harder and harder.

Finally, there was a knock too much, and Hiccup was flung away from them, breath punched from his lungs and the world reduced to swirling blue-white-green-grey. He wrapped his arms over his head as he slammed down, branch and branch and snowy ground, and only when he was sure that he had stopped moving did he dare to look up again.

The worst roar of the avalanche had passed, though there were still grumblings and groanings in the distance and the snow falling heavy around them.

“Anna? Toothless!” he cupped his hands around his mouth, but forests were always tricky things. “Toothless?”

The Night Fury had better hearing, and a better voice with which to answer, and Anna had still been clipped into her harness and hopefully would have been able to hold on. Sure enough, Hiccup heard Toothless roar in response, and stumbled through the snow in the general direction of the noise.

“Toothless? Keep it up, bud, I’m on my way.”

His head was pounding, arms aching and shoulders bruised from where he had hit the branches. If his legs weren’t half-numb with cold, he rather suspect that there would be bruises to count there as well.

Another roar, and then he saw a brief flame through the trees and hurried in that direction. Toothless was lying at the foot of a tree, his wings tightly furled, while Anna sat beside him in the snow with a hunched back and staring eyes.

“Anna? Are you all right?” He dropped to his knees beside her, but she did not look round. Her eyes were locked on the snow, and a thousand miles beyond it. “Anna?”

“I don’t know what to do,” she said, so quietly that he had to lean closer just to hear it.

“What?”

“I don’t know what to do,” Anna repeated. She grabbed her plaits, one in each hand, and curled in on herself. “I can’t go back to Elsa, Elsa doesn’t want us, but I can’t go back to the Silver Priests, because they’re the _Silver Priests_ , they were the ones who sent Elsa away, they’ll want to know what happened, and I can’t tell them that Elsa hit me with her magic–”

“Anna,” he said, reaching to take her hand, but she pulled her fists closer to her.

“–and that she thinks I’m going to die, and I can’t be going to die,” she continued, hysteria seeping into her voice, reaching up to wipe away the ice on her right temple again, “I’ve only just found her again and I have to fix this and–”

“Anna, focus!” He grabbed one of her hands, and she finally looked at him and fell silent both in the same moment. “What Elsa said – we don’t know what happened, not really. I’m not sure that even she understood all of it. I’d suggest that we make camp for now and…”

The words slipped from his tongue as he caught sight of Anna’s hair, revealed from beneath the hat that must have fallen off somewhere in their crash. He may have only met her a few times, but he knew well enough what her hair looked like.

And just how wide it was supposed to be.

“Cancel that,” he said. “We need to get moving.”

“Wait, _what_?” At least Anna did not struggle too much as he pulled her to her feet. “Why?”

“There’s more white in your hair.” He pulled one of her plaits round so that she could see, the narrow white streak approximately double what it had been before, then brushed her temple. “And ice on your forehead again. I really don’t think that’s chance.”

For a moment, Anna looked very afraid, and very young, and he was starkly reminded that by Arendellen standards she was only a child still. Then it passed, and she brushed snow off her arms, even if that did give her the chance to look away from him.

“We can lie to the Silver Priests. It’s not like they don’t deserve it,” he added, with just a little bit of spite.

That, at least, made Anna huff with what might have been a shadow of a laugh. “Maybe it’s time they tried it.”

“That’s the spirit. Now come on, let’s get out of this forest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grammatical nerdery note: When Elsa says _“I thought I killed you!”_ , she should be using the subjunctive but is actually using the indicative. Basically, she is describing it as something that really **did** happen, instead of something that she **thought** happened. As Hiccup points out, to her it was real. I had a minor meltdown over trying to express this in English, but it's a grammatical structure that would be more apparently in Northur or Arendellen. It would be about as obvious as saying "I thought you was dead" - the verb form is totally different.
> 
> The maze is indeed a minotaur reference, and Elsa is thinking of herself as the monster at the end of the maze. Instead of the clean architectural lines of the one we see in the film, this one looks... a little more like a walnut whip woven out of brambles, to be honest. It's a more organic-based structure.
> 
> Some of the lines that Anna in particular uses come from "[We Know Better](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G21o_Jgpf8)", a song written for Frozen to introduce young!Elsa and baby!Anna that was later cut. The names (spellings) Agnarr and Iduna come from the _Frozen Storybook_.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we reintroduce the voice of reason, aka Sir What The Fuck Am I Doing Appearing In This Feature.

It turned out, as Hiccup perhaps should have known it would, to be more difficult than that. His bruises were nothing that he could not handle, and Anna did not seem physically hurt so much as lost. But as soon as Toothless stood up, Hiccup saw the uncomfortable set in his shoulders, the way that he favoured his left front leg.

“Oh, Thor,” he said. He knelt down again, but had barely touched Toothless’s shoulder before the dragon grunted in pain. “Bud! It’s all right!”

Huge green eyes locked on him, darkened with apology, but Hiccup made hushing sounds and ran his hands gently up from Toothless’s ankle, past his elbow, and towards his shoulder. As his hands drew close to the joint, Toothless made a low grating sound in his throat, flinching and almost pulling away before catching himself.

More slowly, and with the lightest touch he could manage, Hiccup ran one hand over the muscle of Toothless’s shoulder. His skin felt even warmer than usual, and noticeably swollen from how it should be. The heat extended right up towards his wing joint, and Hiccup suspected that even with a replacement tail, flying would be out of the question.

“Oh, bud, you got knocked around good, huh?” Drawing his hands away from the injury, Hiccup stroked Toothless’s cheek and leant in to press their foreheads together. “I’m sorry, this is not turning out well. Are you going to be able to walk on that, hmm?” he added, drawing away and standing up, but keeping one hand on Toothless’s jaw.

Toothless squared up, keeping his left front paw more central and taking a halting step forwards as Hiccup backed away. It was accompanied by a huff of pain.

“I’m so, so sorry,” said Hiccup again. “And I don’t even have any bitter lettuce with me. You reckon you can get some distance, huh? We’ll take gentle routes down?”

“Is he all right?” said Anna. “I mean, obviously the way that you’re talking something’s wrong, but it isn’t too serious, is it?”

“Strained muscle, that’s all,” he said, using the firmest and most reassuring tone that he could even if he wasn’t all that sure himself. “I’ll get him to rest it once this is over. Pretty sure we both did a lot worse after the Red Death, huh, bud?”

“I’m sorry,” she added. Hiccup looked round to see her wringing her hands. “I didn’t mean for this. I totally thought that we were just going to be able to find Elsa and _help_ her, I didn’t think that she wouldn’t want helping!”

“Frankly, I didn’t either,” said Hiccup. He pulled his hand away, then winced at the smear of blood it left on Toothless’s skin. “I should probably bind these. Them freezing isn’t enough.” They were not hurting, but that was probably not a good thing when it was this cold.

Mumbling something, Anna nodded. She helped him to cut strips from his cloak and bind his palms with the cleanest parts, keeping ice on Toothless’s shoulder for the short while that they worked. Both drank some water and picked at the food Astrid had given them, uncomfortable silence hanging in the air. Even Anna catching sight of her hat amid the snow, brushing it clean, and shoving it back onto her head was done without words.

“Come on,” said Hiccup finally. He cast a wary eye over Anna’s hair, which at least did not show any sign of gaining any more white. “We need to head back down.”

They only idea that they had right now was the Silver Priests. He just hoped that they were not walking into the worst sort of trap.

 

 

 

 

 

They took the most direct route down the mountainside that looked safe to traverse. Sometimes that meant skidding down steep slopes, or climbing down sections, but as the sun crept towards the sea the air was noticeably less thin. It was still snowing, though, and if anything becoming colder.

Unlike their climb up, Anna was quiet on their way down, even on the occasions when Hiccup did try to think of something to say. Mostly, though, he was completely lost. He had little enough practice at talking to people, and certainly nothing that would prepare him for something like this. Vikings didn’t really talk about their feelings all that much.

As night closed in, they searched again for a cave or some other form of shelter, even as the wind howled ever stronger around them. Sometimes it sounded almost like a scream, and Anna would flinch and look back over her shoulder, eyes haunted.

Frequently, she paused to wipe frost off her forehead. As it became darker, the white in her hair became more visible, and by the time that they were peering blindly for shelter it was clear that it had become wider once again.

Anna had seemed most frightened when she did not know what to do. Hiccup appreciated how that felt right about then.

Makeshift torch in hand – a tree branch and Toothless’s fire – Hiccup stumbled out from the trees and into what looked like a fire-gap. Probably not, he told himself, this far out in the forests. More likely just a natural gap, he supposed.

He sighed to himself, breath a veritable cloud by now, and looked side to side. This route could be a lot faster to travel, but he couldn’t see how directly it led to Arendelle. Besides, more important right now was shelter, with the temperature still dropping around them.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a glint in the distance. Heart pounding, Hiccup held the torch well out of his field of view and looked round carefully, confirming that there was indeed something in the distance. Something that had a light, and was moving too fast to be someone walking.

Anna started to emerge from the trees after him, and with the hand not holding the torch he waved for her to back up. Behind the trees, they were a little more sheltered, and noise could carry well in the night. Looking surprised, she stopped, and then backed up; Hiccup turned to face the light in the distance and took a couple of deep breaths.

The light came closer, but Hiccup held his ground, raising his arms to wave them proudly. The one holding the torch was almost certainly more visible, but sometimes the key part was to make yourself as noticeable as possible. And honestly, whatever this was, it could not be anywhere near as bad as a dragon or several.

“Woah!” someone shouted in the distance. There was the crunching of ice, the grunting of some sort of animal, and words that he did not understand but were once again in a tone that sounded like cursing. “Woah, there!”

Hiccup squeezed his eyes closed as the incoming light half-blinded him, throwing his free arm over his face. There was something that sounded very much like a whinny, more definite swearing, and then the crunching in front of him faded to silence.

Cautiously, he looked up. There was a sled in front of him, drawn by a reindeer, with the light that he had seen swinging from a metal pole. The driver of the sled was scowling over the reins, only for their anger to fade to astonishment at the sight of Hiccup.

“ _You_?” said the man, pulling down the scarf across his face.

Hiccup peered back. “Kristoff?”

He supposed that of all the people to meet out in the Wildlands and not be attacked by, the ice trader was actually a reasonable option. Kristoff looked at him in absolute bewilderment, then dropped the reins and climbed down from the sled.

“What in the eight frozen hells are you doing out here?” said Kristoff, in Arendellen.

Hiccup bit back the urge to give a facetious answer. “Trying to get off the mountain,” he replied. “You?”

“Fine. What are you doing _up_ the North Mountain?”

“Does it really matter?” said Hiccup. “And for that matter, are you going to tell me what _you’re_ doing up here?”

He was hoping that it would work, and indeed Kristoff huffed to himself, jaw clenching. “Fine,” he said.

“Are you heading to Arendelle?” said Hiccup, with a wave in what he hoped was the general direction of the city.

Kristoff folded his arms across his chest. “I was planning on heading home. Not exactly much work for an ice trader in _this_ weather.”

“I’ll pay you to take me back to Arendelle,” said Hiccup. “You know who my father is, and that I won’t avoid payment.”

Vikings respected a certain amount of cunning, of course, when it came to finding the chinks in the armour of words, the trick that would allow them to overcome their foes. But when it came to trading, Berk was scrupulously fair with both Trader Johann and with Kristoff, knowing how vulnerable their trading position was.

Kristoff mulled it over, then sighed. “Like I’m making money from this load of ice. Get in.”

“It’s not just me,” Hiccup admitted. As Kristoff gave him a look of utter disbelief, he turned to the side of the road. “Anna! Come on out!”

Anna shuffled out of the trees, hands twisting nervously as she looked between the two of them. Her hair was completely tucked up beneath her hat; perhaps she had thought it too distinctive. She waved to Kristoff, but walked over to Hiccup and leant close. “You _know_ him?” she said, in Northur.

“It’s not just Arendelle that buys ice,” replied Kristoff, in terse but perfect Northur. Anna blushed.

“This is Kristoff,” said Hiccup in Arendellen, with a wave. “He’s the only one brave or foolish enough to sell decent-quality ice to Berk. Kristoff, this is Anna, a friend of mine from Arendelle. We met years back,” he said, aiming to put off any further explanation, but Kristoff didn’t look like he particularly cared. “Oh,” he added, “and Anna, this is Sven.”

Sven was giving them a remarkably dubious look. Hiccup would have been surprised to see Snotlout being that expressive, let alone a reindeer.

“Hi,” said Anna.

“Well, at least we’ve established there’s no language barrier,” said Hiccup. He glanced at Kristoff. “You still all right with this?”

With a poorly-restrained sigh, Kristoff shrugged. “It’ll be a tight squeeze, but fine.”

“All right.” Now came the tricky bit. If it had just been one rider, Hiccup would probably have aimed to pay them to take Anna back by herself, but Kristoff not only had a sled, he knew Berk. “Er, just one more thing.”

“Seriously, if this is another person–”

“Well, yes, sort of…”

“Just get everyone out here at once,” said Kristoff wearily. “Any more than three, and I’ll be taking off the ice. I’ll need repayment for that, as well.”

Dealing with the easiest part first, Hiccup made the same gesture that he usually did to calm Toothless down. “You know that I’m good for payment,” he said. Anna nudged him with her elbow, probably meaning to point out that she wasn’t exactly penniless either, but he ignored her. Right now he would rather not admit to travelling with the probably-presumed-kidnapped Queen. “I just need you to not freak out when Toothless comes out, all right? And Sven to not, either.”

Kristoff folded his arms across his chest, communicating very clearly how averse to freaking out he was.

“All right,” said Hiccup. He supposed it was now or never. “Toothless, come on out.”

Though he looked round, he kept Kristoff in the corner of his eye as he gestured to the third member of their party. There was a low rumble first, more an uncomfortable edge than anything actually audible beneath the wind, and Kristoff shifted closer to Sven, standing almost protectively in front of him.

The snow made it easier to see Toothless as he peeled out of the shadows of the woods, keeping low to the ground and with his wings tightly furled. His movements were wary more than submissive, head still up and tail swaying but body low.

With a grunt, Sven reared in place, pulling on his reins. Kristoff jumped in front of him, one hand going to the pickaxe on his back, but he did not cry out.

“That’s Toothless!” said Hiccup quickly. “He’s with us! You said you wouldn’t freak out, right?”

“That’s a _dragon_!” said Kristoff, managing to take the obvious and pepper it with disbelief.

“Correct,” said Hiccup.

Kristoff finally tore his eyes away from Toothless to look at Hiccup like he was mad. “You’re travelling with a _dragon_?”

Not having a clever answer, Hiccup just nodded.

Kristoff gawked for a moment longer, then frowned, straightening up slightly from his defensive stance and releasing the handle of the pickaxe. “Can’t it fly?”

“He needs a…” Hiccup chased for the word. “Prosthetic to fly, and it’s damaged. And yes, before you ask, he is how we got _up_ the mountain.”

“So, wait, you are up a mountain, with a dragon, in the most out-of-season weather the island has probably _ever_ had?”

Well, when you put it like that, it did sound like a rather stupid thing to have been doing. “That’s about the sum of it,” said Hiccup.

Kristoff looked between them all again, with a wary look at Anna to see if she was going to say something absurd in turn. To Hiccup’s relief, she merely gave a strained smile, and eventually Kristoff groaned, shook his head, but pointed to the sled.

“You’re going to need to help me shift the ice off. He’s riding on the back. And,” he grabbed Hiccup by the shoulder before he could walk past and get to work, “you owe me _big time_ for this.”

“Trust me,” said Hiccup, thinking of the white in Anna’s hair, “I’m more than aware of that.”

 

 

 

 

 

Three of them really were a tight squeeze. Hiccup found himself squashed between Anna and Kristoff by unspoken agreement, while Toothless sat on the sled with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his flaps, well, flapping in the wind. The two blankets, one plain grey wool and one moss-green with some finish that Hiccup did not recognise to make it almost fluffy to the touch, were draped across all of their knees.

“So,” said Hiccup, after the silence became just too uncomfortable. “What were you doing up the mountain?”

“Working,” said Kristoff pointedly. “What were _you_ doing up there?”

“We’re…” he exchanged a glance with Anna, who just shrugged. Time to take the lead, then. “We were looking for Anna’s sister.”

“Out here?” Kristoff frowned, and looked Anna over. “You’re not from the ice trading settlement.”

There was no question in his voice. “We’re from Arendelle,” said Anna. “I mean, me and my sister are from Arendelle, obviously Hiccup isn’t.” Her vague gesture with her hands hit Hiccup in the chest again.

“Bad weather for it,” said Kristoff. He scratched the side of his neck. “If it were Berk I’d say it was normal, but Arendelle…”

Even Berk rarely had snow in the summer, and certainly not this bad. Hiccup was still trying not to think too hard about the implications of that.

“I thought we could fix that,” Anna said. She huddled into the corner of the sled, eyes still distant. “Looks like I was wrong?”

“Fix the weather?” said Kristoff incredulously. His expression, though, was more fixed than confused as he looked straight at Anna, letting Sven chose his own way through the darkness. “Or are you saying that there’s something else behind this?” He must have seen Hiccup’s uncomfortable look, or felt the way that he tensed, as he shifted to take them both in. “I’ve already got a dragon on my sled. Don’t give me reason to stop this.”

“It’s my sister,” said Anna, at the same time as Hiccup said, “It’s magic.”

Hiccup winced.

“ _Your_ sister,” Kristoff stabbed a finger at Anna, “has _magic_?” he pointed at Hiccup. When neither of them protested, he groaned and slumped back into his seat. “I always knew Berk was crazy.”

“Technically true, but this isn’t just a Berk issue,” said Hiccup. Kristoff looked at him dubiously. “What’s going on here is just because Anna’s sister is scared.” Something made him withhold Elsa’s name, just wanting a little bit of protection for her, perhaps all that he could do for her now. “When it passes, so will the storm. It always does.”

“She’s done this before?”

“She’s done magic before,” said Hiccup. Kristoff muttered something under his breath. “I think it would have been noticed if she’d frozen half the island.”

It earned him a look which said that he was being a smartarse, but he had been receiving those for as long as he could remember, and blithely ignored it.

“Fine. So why Arendelle?”

“She needs some space right now,” said Hiccup. He chose to ignore, as well, the way that Kristoff rolled his eyes at the words. “We thought it wiser not to press the matter. Besides,” he glanced over at Anna. “People will be getting worried.”

It was starting to feel like the one sensible thing they had done, truth be told. Anna rubbed her forehead again, taking snow off her hat and ice off her skin, then shivered again. Where her leg was pressed against Hiccup’s, it felt cold even through the layers of clothing they had between them, and he wished that he could see more of her hair just to see how it looked. But they could not exactly check with Kristoff in the sled.

“So, is there good ice on the North Mountain or something?” said Hiccup, not sure what else he could say about Kristoff’s profession. “The stuff you bring to Berk is always good-quality, but I’m guessing you get that from further north.”

“There are good spots all over the mountains,” replied Kristoff. “Wherever the conditions are right. Just need to get there before anyone else does.”

Well, that might explain why he was out in the middle of nowhere, at least. Whether he used the bridge in the centre of the gorge, or travelled all the way to the east to go through the ice harvesters’ village, it was going to be quite a distance.

“Yeah, the others usually go out in teams, right?”

“Sven and I are enough.”

Either Kristoff was not very good at making conversation, or he was good at shutting it down. Hiccup glanced over at Anna, and felt fear grip his chest when he saw that her right eyebrow had turned white as well. When she saw him staring, she mouthed ‘what’ and peered upwards at her own brows, then shrugged at him with a flick of one hand.

“And I thought I was bad for not-talking,” muttered Kristoff. He sighed. “Fine, fine. Who am I taking you back to, anyway? Viking ships will be in the docks, right?”

“No!” said Hiccup. “I mean, yes, they are, but we need to get Anna back. I can take care of myself. And Toothless can’t go inside the city limits,” he said, with a wave over their shoulders. “If you can just get us back to the Arendelle side of the gorge, we can make our way back.”

“Parents waiting?” Kristoff said, without looking round. It was only half a question, and Hiccup heard a wry note beneath it even if Anna, whose jaw had tightened and who wrapped her arms more tightly around herself, did not seem to have done.

“Fiancé,” she bit out.

At that, Kristoff looked surprised for an instant, before frowning as he looked her over. “You’re engaged? How old are you, twelve?”

Personally, Hiccup would have said that Anna looked older than he did, certainly when she was wearing her more formal gowns and had her hair up. Huddling in a sled wearing normal clothes and scattered with snow and ice, perhaps not so much, but her face was already starting to lose the childish roundness that he remembered.

“Sixteen,” said Anna. Somehow it was better to hear her with some fire in her voice as she sat up, even if Hiccup wanted to sink through the seat and away from the argument he can feel brewing.

Perhaps he could climb into the back with Toothless. That was starting to look like a good idea.

Kristoff scoffed. “Sixteen? You think you’re ready to decide on the rest of your life? Sixteen year olds are idiots. How long have you even known him?”

“I have known Hans for over a year, thank you,” said Anna. “And sixteen isn’t that young.” She elbowed Hiccup, who was really starting to wish that someone among his acquaintances knew how to get his attention without hitting him. “Loads of people in Berk get married when they’re fifteen or sixteen, right? You can get married as soon as you’re an adult.”

He tried and failed not to think of Dagur. He had only been fourteen when that whole absurd situation had unravelled, and his age had not been the problem.

“Well, Berk isn’t–” he started.

“Arendelle isn’t _Berk_ ,” said Kristoff, which was approximately what Hiccup had been going to stay but was delivered in a far more acerbic tone. “Come on, you start wielding an axe when you’re five, you’re not going to live that long. You need to marry early.”

“Hey!” said Hiccup. “We do not all go around wielding axes when we’re five!”

Kristoff looked at him searchingly. It was disconcerting from someone who really wasn’t that much older than them.

“Fine,” Hiccup allowed. “Most of us only have stones.”

Kristoff raised an eyebrow at Anna, looking just a little smug. She sat up a little more in her seat, but pressed her lips tightly together. As ice crept down over her forehead again, Hiccup tried not to stare, and instead fixed his eyes squarely on the snow-filled darkness of the path ahead. After a moment’s consideration, he slumped down in his seat, the better to let them argue over his head. Neither seemed to notice.

“Anyway, even in Berk they don’t always get married young. How old was Stoick the Vast when he got married?” said Kristoff.

“I don’t see–” Anna spluttered, then looked at Hiccup.

It looked like he was in this whether he liked it or not. “My father was twenty-six. How did you _know_ –”

“I’m good with ages,” said Kristoff, without taking his eyes off Anna. “See? Even in Berk–”

“Oh yeah?” said Anna. “Hiccup, how old was your _mother_ when she was married?”

Whereas Anna, of course, knew plenty about Hiccup’s family. Knowing that he was not going to be able to get out of this, he sighed. “She… had just turned sixteen.”

“See?” said Anna triumphantly.

“Sixteen?” Finally, Kristoff took a look at Hiccup, but considering how incredulous his expression was he was not sure that was an improvement. “Seriously? Well, that still doesn’t mean that Berk is like Arendelle,” he said to Anna.

“Look, Hans is different. He and I have spent a _lot_ of time together this past year, I mean, it’s not like there have been many other people around,” said Anna, just a touch of darkness in her voice for a moment. “But anyway, it’s not like we hardly know each other.”

“Wait a minute…” Kristoff’s eyes narrowed. “Did you say Hans?”

“It’s not like it’s _that_ uncommon a name,” said Hiccup quickly.

Frowning, Kristoff looked Anna over again, more minutely this time. She drew back as best she could in her seat when, in a flash, Kristoff leant across and snatched the hat from her head. It was so fast that neither she nor Hiccup had time to stop him, and only Toothless managed to growl from behind before the hat was gone, and Anna’s braided hair was tumbling free.

It was more than half white now; that was the first thing that Hiccup saw. White was wending down into the left plait as well, and there was hardly a strand of red left in the right. Anna looked shocked for a moment, then defiant, raising her chin at Kristoff as if challenging him. For his part, Kristoff only stared, then gave a flick of the reins and shouted a word that was neither Arendellen nor Northur.

The sled began to slow down, then slowly ground to a halt in the thick snow, as Kristoff twisted in his seat to face them, his expression now wholly serious. The movement pushed Hiccup back into Anna, so close that he was almost on her lap.

“You,” he said, pointing at Anna very seriously with the hat still clutched in one thick-gloved hand. “You’re _Queen Anna_. And you,” a gesture to Hiccup. “Didn’t _tell_ me.”

“It doesn’t change things,” said Hiccup. “We still need to get back to Arendelle.”

“Woah, woah, woah, _no_ ,” said Kristoff, with a wave of both hands. He took a deep breath, eyes closed, before fixing clear brown eyes on them. “The Queen doesn’t leave the castle. Everyone knows that. I only know about your hair because I deliver ice to the Palace, and I’ve seen you riding in the grounds. And now you’re out here with the son of Berk’s chief and a dragon, saying that your sister has magic. Your sis…”

He trailed off, as the meaning of his own words must have sunk in. Everyone knew about the princess who had been so cruelly taken, kidnapped when she was only eight years old.

“Is it really your sister that you were going after?”

“Yes,” said Anna. All of the fight had gone out of her, and she curled her hands against her chest. The ice on her forehead and around her left temple was thicker, freezing a block of her hair solid and unmoving against her scalp.

“All right,” Kristoff said, softly. He gave her back the hat, then fell still again. White was crawling across Anna’s right eyebrow, stealing away the colour, and her eyelashes seemed to fade away against her skin. “No. We’re not going back to Arendelle.”

“We have to go back.” Hiccup put a hand on Kristoff’s arm, but it was shaken aside as Kristoff picked up the reins again. He gave them a flick and called out another word that Hiccup did not recognise. “Aren’t you listening? We have to go back! This is important!”

“Your Silver Priests won’t be able to help,” said Kristoff, without looking round.

Whatever Hiccup had been trying to come up with to say, truth or lie, was knocked roundly from his head as the words left Kristoff’s lips. He simply stared, for once utterly speechless.

“This has happened before, hasn’t it? When you were… hell, I was eight, you must have been… five? Six? Two of the Silver Priests came to the Valley to ask for Grand Pabbie’s help. When he summoned up the image, it was a girl, with red hair with a white streak.”

Anna was looking at him with just as much shock as Hiccup was, though perhaps with a little more horror. She reached for the arm of the sled, all but clutching, and held on so tightly that her arm shook.

“He agreed to go down to the city to help. He was gone three days. When he came back, he called a council to tell the adults what had happened. Even my mother wouldn’t tell me everything. But when I got older, and learnt a bit more about magic, I learnt the crystals that Grand Pabbie took with him. Fire, and healing, and ones that can give and take memories.

“We’re not going to the Silver Priests,” he said, one last time. “We’re going to my family.”

 

 

 

 

 

It was not so much the words that astounded Hiccup, but Anna’s own bewilderment. He could see in her expression that she knew nothing about this, nothing about what Elsa had wept for when she spoke of striking Anna with her magic when they were children. Had that been the accident about which Elsa had been speaking for so long?

His head whirled. Putting his face in his hands, Hiccup tried to sort through everything that had just exploded over him, and jumped when there was a nudge at the back of his neck before realising that it was Toothless when a huff of warm air washed over his skin. He stole a peek between his fingers to see Anna pulling her hat back on again, looking too intently at the carvings on the front of the sled.

They slowed again, and Hiccup’s head jerked upwards. “What is it?”

“There are two paths,” said Kristoff. “The safe one is longer.”

“And the short one?” said Hiccup.

With another nudge on the reins, Kristoff bought the sled to a complete halt. “That way,” he pointed down the path ahead of them. “Heads east. We can use it to take the eastern path, which is the route I was going to take. That way,” he pointed off the side, and Hiccup squinted into the darkness to see what might have been a path or might just have been a gap between two trees, “leads through the Lost Valley.”

“Why do I not like the sound of the Lost Valley?” Hiccup said warily.

“It’s not the valley that’s lost,” said Kristoff grimly. “It’s the people who go into it. Something lives in the valley, and people who go in don’t come out again.”

“Why are you even suggesting it, then?” said Anna.

For an answer, Kristoff looked to the back of the sled. Toothless chirped as eyes fell upon him.

“What can the dragon handle?” said Kristoff.

Hiccup felt the hairs on his arms standing on end from more than just the cold, and he did his best to look stern. “I’m not risking Toothless.”

“If we’re risking something, we’re all risking it,” said Kristoff, making a circular motion with one finger. “Listen, _I_ won’t usually go through that valley, all right? But right now, I think that we might need to, because I know just enough about magic to know that I don’t know much at all. We need Grand Pabbie, and the fastest way is right though that valley.”

It was a lot to risk for someone that you didn’t know at all, even if that someone was technically your Queen. Hiccup was about to ask for at least a moment to think it over, but when he looked over to Anna there were distinct veins of blue ice snaking down across her forehead like the roots of the tree.

“Well,” he said, hearing the tightness in his own voice. “Toothless is a Night Fury. If we could take on the Red Death, I’m sure that we can take on whatever Arendelle’s mountains have to offer.”

He hoped sorely that he sounded more convinced than Anna looked. Kristoff was harder to read, or perhaps just harder to sway.

Hiccup swallowed. “Let’s go.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief cameo by: Kristoff's sled.
> 
> This dragon is one from _Race to the Edge_ , and is called the Snow Wraith. It sees in infra-red - one of the reasons that Sven is the one best able to fight with it, in fact. Reindeer are much less visible in infra-red than humans are, due to their thick coats.
> 
> I've mixed things up a little with the colours of the gems that the trolls wear, with the hope of implying that different stones are connected to different sorts of magic. Some of them might prefer different forms of magic - or just like different colours! - but most of them have a variety. This _does_ , however, mean that in animation they would have looked like a bunch of Christmas trees, so I'm actually kinda glad Disney didn't go that route.

Gobber’s old exaggerated stories about the monsters in the Wildlands, told to fill the long winter nights when Hiccup was younger, seemed a lot less funny now. Kristoff had made it briefly and starkly clear that he had no idea what was in the valley, just that he had known people try to cross it a handful of times. They had never come out again.

They all fell quiet as they entered the valley, accompanied by only the howl of the winds and the sound of the sled cutting through the snow. The mountains around them provided more shelter than Hiccup had expected, although it still snowed heavily enough that Kristoff had to keep their pace steady as they made their way through the gaps between the trees.

He wanted to ask questions, even if Kristoff might not have the answers, just for the desperate chance that he _might_. Might have some knowledge that he did not realise was even there. But Kristoff had told them to keep quiet, and Hiccup bit the inside of his lips to hold back the words.

Once or twice, Anna’s eyes fluttered closed, and her chin drooped, but then she pulled upright and looked into the snow again. She was still shivering, though, and Hiccup knew that was a good sign.

Thunderous rumbles cut through the air above them, but went on far too long to be anything other than avalanches. Before long, Kristoff pulled the sled to a halt with mutters beneath his scarf, as ragged snow and chunks of ice cut across the path in front of them.

And it was a path, of that Hiccup was starting to feel certain. He just wasn’t sure what could have made it.

“That’ll take time to dig through,” said Kristoff, pulling down his scarf to speak. “Any ideas?”

“Toothless?” suggested Anna.

Hiccup looked back over his shoulder. Instead of sitting up in the back of the sled, wind in his flaps and tongue lolling out, he was hunched low with his eyes scanning the sky around them, claws biting against the blanket on which he sat. Toothless met his eyes and huffed, steam billowing from his nose.

“It’d be loud,” said Hiccup. “Attract attention.”

“Got any other ideas, then?” said Kristoff, with a wave back to the wall of snow.

Unfortunately, Hiccup didn’t. With a sigh, he nodded, and climbed over Anna and out of the sled, immediately sinking calf-deep into the snow. “Come on, bud,” he said, waving Toothless down; Toothless cautiously climbed down, flaps still pricked and twitching at something that Hiccup could not hear. It was impossible to blame the dragon for not wanting to be here; if Hiccup had a choice, he would not be, either. “Medium burn.”

He made the same pointing gesture as when calling for a plasma blast, but slowed down and doubled, and Toothless drew in that sword-sharp breath before breathing and roaring together, the best that he could manage to emulate the fire of other dragons like Stormfly and Hookfang. The result was a sort of series of punches, more like a wave in how they blurred together, that did not have the full power of a quick hit but melted things better, even if it did use up more of his firepower. If he could manage six plasma blasts, he could only really manage two breaths like this. But he was not going to tell Kristoff that just yet.

The snow melted away, water freezing again in a smooth sheet almost the moment that Toothless stopped breathing on it. It was deep enough to freeze over the fallen rocks once again.

“We clear?” shouted Kristoff.

A smear of colour in the ice caught Hiccup’s eye. He stepped closer warily, peering down to see the torn-up body of… something. Whatever it was, it was now unrecognisable, just a tangle of fractured bones, red-brown meat and dots of white. Maggots, now frozen in the ice. Whatever it was, it had been dead before the snow had got to it.

Hiccup swallowed the lump in his throat, then turned forcibly away. “As we’ll ever be,” he said.

He waded back to the sled, hurried Toothless onto the back, and waved to Anna to move into the middle. “Come on, I’ll sit on the end. Just in case.”

Hopefully, she would take it to mean in case there was another fall of snow. But she was freezing to the touch, and Kristoff looked startled as she was pressed against him by Hiccup climbing back in. “Gods,” Kristoff muttered, then tugged his scarf back into place again. “Let’s go,” he added, voice dulled.

It might have just been his nerves that made the wind take on more of an edge as they continued on. The sky was dark and heavy above them, and even with a solid lid to direct its light the lantern hanging on Kristoff’s sled seemed far too bright in the darkness. But they could not snuff it out without being lost completely.

Something shifted in the air above them. Toothless snarled, Sven jerked in the reins and sent the sled skidding, and the trees in front of them crashed down in a shower of wood and needles. With a yell, Kristoff lunged forwards, reaching out towards Sven, but the sled had turned sideways on and slammed into the tree trunks enough to knock all of them into each other.

Hiccup felt as much as heard the next strike, a percussive blast in the air that throbbed against his eardrums and echoed in his chest. A section of the tree not far behind the sled was reduced to splinters.

“Get out of the sled!” he said, bundling Anna across him and out before grabbing Kristoff by the arm and dragging him as well. “Get out, now!”

Kristoff went to protest, but that might have been more about the handling as he scrambled out of the sled as well and Hiccup shoved him well clear. This time, he definitely heard the hollow _thunk_ in the air, then in a whirl of black he was grabbed by the cloak and pulled away, feet completely leaving the ground.

An instant later, the sled was gone.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” said Kristoff, staggering out of a waist-deep snowdrift.

“Whatever it is, I think we just found it,” said Hiccup, scanning the sky. But it was impossible to see anything, so close to a whiteout that the whole world seemed reduced to just the four of them and the eternal snow. “Toothless…”

Toothless shrieked into the sky, so high that Hiccup could barely hear it and it made his ears ring. Anna and Kristoff both looked over with bewilderment written clearly on their faces, but Hiccup did not have a clue either, and it was all that he could do to not let it show as he shielded his eyes with his bandaged hands and scanned around them.

“We need to find some shelter,” he said to the others. “Or at least something that will have our backs. A cave, a cliff. It’s definitely flying.”

“Is it a dragon?” said Anna. Her hat had been knocked askew and her plaits had fallen free; they were now almost entirely white, the effect ghostly in the snow.

“I don’t know,” Hiccup admitted. “It’s not something I’ve seen before.”

In his mind, he scrambled through the pages of the book of dragons. Nadders, Zipplebacks, Nightmares, Gronckles, Whispering Deaths… they all had their fire, distinctive patterns in the night. Changewings spat acid, and this was definitely not that. The impact was too big to be from the spines that some of the dragons could fire. The closest thing that he could think of was a Thunderdrum’s percussive blast, but the sound of that would be unmistakeable even in this blizzard.

Before he could say anything else, Toothless fired into the sky, eyes narrow and wings half-flared despite the wind. There was a howl above them, and for a moment the sky was lit in blue and purple, revealing a faint white shape in the darkness.

A _white_ dragon? Or some other creature altogether, as was rumoured in Berk when the winters grew long and people’s tongues grew restless?

“Move!” Kristoff grabbed him and pushed him in Anna’s direction. “Get going!”

“What are you–” Anna rounded on them. “Kristoffer!”

“It’s Kristoff!” he shouted over his shoulder, running over to the remains of the sled. He scanned the wreckage, then grabbed a satchel from the front of the sled, a pickaxe from the back, and a coil of rope that had somehow survived unscathed. With a single sweep, he cut the reins holding Sven in place, and the reindeer reared and snorted his thanks. Then Kristoff was turning again, fighting for traction on the snow, and running again.

Hiccup grabbed Anna’s shoulder and pulled. “Come on,” he said. “Unless you want Toothless to drag you.”

With a pained grunt, Anna pushed herself to run as well, with gritted teeth and hands balled into fists beneath her gloves. Toothless loped behind them, head still up and teeth stilled bared, shining against the blackness.

Once, twice, three times, trees crashed down behind them, showering them with ice and stinging fragments of wood. Hiccup felt cuts on the back of his neck, a sharp pain that withered away between the cold and the fear. Something cut through the air close by them, and again there was an impression of white but it was hard to tell anything in the darkness. It was instinct more than thought that made Hiccup tackle Anna to the ground, but he still felt the blast through the air above them, close enough that he felt the waves of it, without any heat.

Toothless roared, and _something_ roared back, the sound like grating stone. He lashed his tail, and Hiccup yelled as snow poured down over him and Anna, swamping them into the darkness. Rolling onto served to further wrap him in snow, but he wormed his hand to face-height and pushed out to make a breathing hole to the air.

He saw a dragon. It was white, barely visible through the snow, but he could still see the spread of the wings, the thick body. It was built like a Monstrous Nightmare, with two legs and two wings, but the body was far thicker, almost Gronckle-like. Its mouth opened, dark and without a hint of fire in there, and Hiccup saw the punch of its body as it fired but with no light in its throat.

Snow was thrown into the air, but Toothless leapt aside from the blow and roared again, the high Night Fury scream of _protection_. He did not fire back, and Hiccup knew with a sinking feeling that he was holding back what shots he had left. They would have recharged from when they had made their way through the maze, but not from burning through the avalanche.

He hoped that whatever this thing was, it did not know that.

“Hey, _Stalluu_ ,” shouted Kristoff, stepping out of the gloom. He had Sven at his side, with antlers readied, and his pickaxe in one hand and rope in the other. His scarf was pulled down to clear his mouth, and he was glaring up at the white dragon.

It turned with one sweep of its wings, snarling. The wind did not seem to bother it in the slightest, and vaguely Hiccup wondered how strong its wing membranes must be, before it struck him that this was really not the time.

Perhaps he should draw his knife. The thought felt strangely shaped now, as if it had been buried a long time and had rusted half away. He put his hand to the hilt, but did not have time to do anything before the dragon fired – that was not quite the right word, it was just a punch of air, it seemed, setting the snowflakes whirling – and Kristoff jumped to the side with a surprisingly light step.

The white dragon lunged forwards and snapped its teeth on the empty air. Kristoff raised his pickaxe, but the dragon struck out with one wing and sent him flying back into the snow once again. It turned and snarled, only for Sven to leap forwards and headbutt it, hard enough for the dragon’s head to be turned aside. It roared its anger, but turned its head almost blindly, despite the huge eyes. Only as Kristoff crawled out of the snow again, still clinging to his pickaxe, did the dragon turn and focus.

Sven lashed out with his front hooves, catching the dragon in the cheek so hard that it drew dark stripes of blood. With a snarl, the dragon took to the air again, vanishing into the snow, and Hiccup grabbed Anna by the arm to pull her in Kristoff’s direction.

“We need to get under cover,” he said, once again. The only one of them who could even hold their own against the dragon was apparently the reindeer, as even Toothless was running out of shots.

Kristoff paused, then nodded. “Yeah. Cliffsides. Something right on the mountain’s spine.”

There had to be something else that he wasn’t saying, but Hiccup did not have time for that right now. They ran through the snow, careening between trees that seemed to appear out of nowhere, while the dragon roared above them and trees crashed down at their heels. Snow whipped at Hiccup’s face, slid under his feet, and more than once Toothless nudged against his back either to keep him upright or encourage him to run faster, he was not even sure.

“Here!” Kristoff darted off, and a cliff snapped into view, a sudden dark wall behind the trees. There was a hollow that scooped into it, not all that much of a cave, but he gestured for Anna to go to the back of it, and Hiccup to follow. “All right, come on.”

Sven and Toothless both stood in front of them, Sven with his head lowered and Toothless with his teeth bared. With shaking hands, Kristoff started fumbling around his neck, pulling down his scarf, then hissed a curse and dragged off one glove with his teeth to free his hand.

“What are you doing?” said Anna incredulously. The crashing of the white dragon came closer, perhaps; the wind and the night made it hard to tell.

“Just one moment.” Kristoff finally got hold of something, and pulled a pendant over his head, knocking off his hat as he did so. When he opened his palm, it revealed a glowing green stone, faceted and around two inches long, on a worn string. “All right. Come on.” He pulled off his other glove, using his teeth again, and rolled the stone back and forth between his palms. “Soon would be good…”

“Kristoff, what are you doing?” said Hiccup. He gave up and drew his knife, doing his best to hold onto it with stiff hands.

Kristoff peered at the stone, then rubbed it again. “Soon would be very good, guys!”

“Kristoff! What are you–”

The white dragon landed in front of them, with a thud that seemed to shake the ground. Toothless snarled, sound echoing off the cliffs, and Hiccup braced himself for the blast that he expected to come, when there was a deeper crashing sound and the cliff around them cracked and shifted. Rocks boomed down in front of them, and with a roar that became half a scream the white dragon took to the sky again, vanishing off.

A few second passed as the last, smaller stones trickled down.

“Did you just do magic?” Hiccup rounded on Kristoff, forgetting that he was still holding the knife until he was facing the man.

Kristoff had the stone still held between his palms, and was panting, looking vaguely amazed. “No,” he replied. “I just called my family for some help.”

“Your family can do magic?” said Anna.

“Uh… yeah, I was hoping to have more time to explain this,” he said. There was another grind of stone above them and Hiccup and Anna flinched, but Kristoff did not move. “Yeah, look, my family aren’t exactly _normal_.”

“You mean apart from the magic?” Anna waved to the stone in his hand. “And the reindeer?”

“Yeah, well,” Kristoff looked slightly panicked now, as he curled his hand around the pendant then hastily slipped it over his head again. “Just don’t, well,” he glanced at Hiccup. “Don’t freak out, all right? My family, well, they’re my adopted family, you know? And they’re not exactly what you’re going to expect. I mean, well…”

“Spit it out!” said Hiccup.

“Kristoff!” One of the boulders unrolled itself and held out its arms to him. “You bought _friends_!”

Kristoff sighed. “They’re trolls.”

 

 

 

 

 

Anna looked at Hiccup. Hiccup looked at Toothless. The dragon looked just as bewildered as he felt, which was saying something at that particular moment.

The boulder – no, Hiccup had to correct himself, the _troll_ – walked over to Kristoff and grabbed his hand, tugging him down into a half-crouch. “What are you doing back already? You said you wouldn’t be back until the turn of the moon! And who are these?”

Kristoff laughed nervously, shooting sidelong glances at all three of them. “Yeah, that’s all kind of the same answer – can we head back home? I really don’t want to meet with that thing again.”

The troll looked at him very seriously. “You do know not to come through this valley, don’t you? It took a lot of us to work together to reach here.”

“I know,” Kristoff said with a wince, sounding suspiciously like Hiccup trying to explain something to Stoick. “But I couldn’t contact you from further away, and we really need to get here quickly, because–”

“Kristoff!” A second boulder revealed itself to be a troll. They were both similarly dressed, if it was indeed clothing, covered in some sort of moss and plants that trailed long leaves and the occasional small flower. They had large heads, with very rounded features, and deep dark eyes. Around their necks, or at least where Hiccup presumed their necks were, they were similar pendants to the one Kristoff wore, but strung with a number of crystals that glimmered different colours in the gloom. “We heard you calling! Come here!”

Kristoff went to speak, but the second troll grabbed his other hand and launched themselves into his arms, sending him staggering back against the wall with a grunt as it hugged him. “Thanks,” he managed to wheeze, “Dad.”

“Dad?” said Anna and Hiccup, at the same time.

A third troll unrolled and approached Toothless cautiously; he dragon backed up until he bumped into Hiccup’s leg. Hiccup managed not to stagger, and even kept his eyes on Kristoff as the man looked embarrassed and lowered the troll to the ground.

“Yeah,” Kristoff said. That sounded like an admittance, as well. “Guys, this is my family. Dad, Crag, Geode, this is Hiccup, from Berk, and Anna, from Arendelle, and…” he waved vaguely, words apparently failing him.

“Toothless,” put in Hiccup. “Also from Berk. Kristoff, can we talk to–”

“Yes, we need to talk to Grand Pabbie,” said Kristoff to the trolls. “Now. It’s very important. Please, open up the tunnels back,” he said, to all of them in general. Hiccup was not yet sure how he told them apart.

Mercifully, the three trolls huddled together and started murmuring along themselves, raising the strings of crystals at their throats to brighter glimmers. Their words brushed like the sound of sand shifting over each other.

“Your _family_ are _trolls_?” hissed Hiccup, grabbing Kristoff by the sleeve.

“Like I said, I’m adopted.”

“I didn’t think this was a case of you taking after your grandparents!” said Hiccup, with a wave in the direction of the trolls. Kristoff gave him an unimpressed look, which Hiccup simply mirrored right back.

Finally, Kristoff sighed. “Look, I’ve never exactly told people about this. I didn’t really know how to bring it up.”

“They’re real,” said Anna, quietly. She was watching the trolls in fascination, with a hint of a smile on her lips. She crouched down, putting a hand on Toothless’s haunch for balance, as the three trolls started to pass one of the crystals between them, the glow of it becoming an increasingly bright green-yellow. “ _Trolls_.”

Hiccup rubbed his forehead. “I am not telling Gobber about this,” he muttered to himself.

“What?” said Kristoff.

“Nothing. What are they doing?”

“They’re opening a tunnel back home. It’ll probably be the one that they used to get out here, so it won’t take much magic. It’s the new tunnels that are harder.”

Perhaps, once this was done, he would be able to get Elsa to speak to the trolls. Or even to Kristoff. Someone else who knew about magic – anything about it – and did not respond with screaming fear and threats of the Trials could only be a good experience. But first they had to see to it that something was done about the spreading white in Anna’s hair. He looked round just in time to see white consume the last of the strands, and ice thicken on the collar of her dress and the back of her neck.

Anna, first. It would be no good trying to help so many people at once that he failed them all.

He sheathed his knife and took a few deep breaths. Even with the white dragon gone, he found himself keep one eye on the sky, and he was starting to feel weak and tired in the wake of their flight. He had only enough energy to be relieved, awe barely able to brush against his mind, as one of the trolls crushed the small stone in his hand, producing a bundle of light that seeped out between their fingers.

The troll walked up to the wall of the cave and cast the light across it, like painting with an enormous brush, smears of green light that spread out across the rock into a rough circle that swelled, grew painfully bright, then fell away in a shimmer to reveal a tunnel, its ceiling glowing with greenish light just bright enough to show the flat hard-packed ground below.

“Wow,” said Anna. She went to rise, then cried out and fell forwards with her knees still bent. Hiccup caught her by the shoulders and helped her back to her feet, breathing hard and straightening her arms and legs with aching slowness. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s… it’s nothing.”

“In Berk, we call that yak dung,” said Hiccup.

“Bullshit,” said Kristoff, behind him, finishing the sentence at the same time. Hiccup raised an eyebrow but did not comment.

“I’m just stiff,” Anna said. “It’s just the weather.”

Still, as Kristoff had pointed out, bullshit, but Hiccup bit his tongue. He looped one of Anna’s arms around his shoulders, and after only a brief attempt to pull away she acceded and let him support some of her weight. Her arm was cold and stiff around his shoulders, and he was reminded all too much of handling Albrekt.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you to Kristoff’s family.”

 

 

 

 

 

The tunnel was straight and level, and when the stone grated closed behind them it blocked away the wind and left the air warm and comfortable. The trolls chattered away to Kristoff, about someone who had earnt a fire crystal and something about mushrooms, talking over each other at high speed while he tried to get in a word edgeways.

As they walked, Hiccup took the chance to look around them. The tunnel was not as like that of the Whispering Deaths as he had feared it might be; the floor was flat, the ceiling smooth and covered in green moss and glimmering green lights that were just bright enough to light their way without leaving his eyes hurting. He could not see any side-branches or turns, and as they walked on the air became slightly warmer and more humid, albeit with a faint eggy smell.

Judging by the way that Anna wrinkled her nose, she noticed that as well.

He heard the whistle of the wind before he noticed anything else, and looked ahead of them to see a change in the light ahead of them, more a shift from green to white than anything else. Two of the trolls rolled up into balls and took off at great speed ahead of them, while the third – Hiccup was fairly sure that it was the one Kristoff had called his father – kept alongside them, still talking fast.

“We had to start off by the springs, you know where–”

“Yes, I think by now I know where the tunnels come out,” said Kristoff wearily.

“Good, don’t want you getting lost again like that first time. Your mother still worries when we let you use the tunnels by yourself, you know. And you really do need to tell me how you met your friends!”

“I wouldn’t say they’re–”

“You know, last time you bought a friend home, it was a frog. And I’ve not got anything against frogs, but it couldn’t _talk_ , you know? Can the dragon talk?”

It took Hiccup a moment to realise that he was being addressed, and it was still mostly from the way that Kristoff was looking at him with a sort of desperation. “Uh, no,” he said. “He can make himself understood pretty well, but no, he doesn’t talk.”

The troll shrugged. “Pity.”

“Look, it’s been really nice catching up, but we _have_ to talk to Grand Pabbie,” said Kristoff desperately. “It’s important. Anna is–”

The troll gave a delighted gasp, as they reached the entrance to the cave. “Oh, I see! You need to introduce her to us especially! I get it! Come on!”

“What? No! No no no no _no_ –”

More trolls rolled in, grabbing Kristoff by the hands and dragging him out again. Kristoff’s father ran over and grabbed Anna by the hand, pulling her away from Hiccup with strength that caught them both completely by surprise. Anna yelped as she was tugged away.

“Do not encourage them!” Kristoff managed to stick his head around the edge of the tunnel. “Whatever they say, do _not_ encourage them!”

Hiccup exchanged another glance with Toothless, then hurriedly followed them out of the tunnel.

The stone sealed up behind them once again with a grinding sound, leaving flawless rock behind. Lichen and moss crawled down and into place, and finally even fine blue tendrils wound down, with white flowers scattered along them. Hiccup’s breath caught in his throat as he recognised the trollwort, and he had to rest a hand on Toothless’s back for a moment as his knees threatened to give way.

With a rumble, Toothless nudged Hiccup’s hip, and Hiccup closed his eyes for a moment as his head swam. He took a deep, slightly sulphury, breath, then started off after the cluster of trolls in the distance, hurrying both Kristoff and Anna along and cheering and chattering to themselves.

It was rather nice to not be the centre of attention, in a way. Kristoff stood up, tried to talk to some of the trolls, and was pulled back down to their height again while Anna looked on in bewilderment. As they clustered around, Hiccup found a boulder which he was fairly sure was not a troll, and poked it a couple of times to make sure. When it did not move, he shifted over and sat down with a sigh, hands on his knees.

“It’s not like that!” Kristoff shouted, voice carrying well in the clear air. Hiccup glanced up to see that the sky above them was somehow free of clouds, the wind gentle and not a sign of snow. More of the work of the trolls? “She is _engaged_ , she – argh!” He was pulled down into the mass of trolls again.

Something nudged at Hiccup’s left foot, and he looked down to see a small troll poking at his prosthetic. When they realised he was looking, their eyes went wide and they curled up again, looking like an ordinary mossy rock in the blink of an eye.

“Hey there, little fella,” said Hiccup, bending down. “It’s all right. You can have a look if you want.”

“Are you made of metal?” said the troll. The voice made them sound young, and they shifted from foot to foot like a child.

Hiccup shook his head. “No. I lost my foot, so I had to make a new one. Otherwise I’d fall over,” he added, and as he expected the troll child giggled. “You’re made of rock though, right?”

“Uh-huh,” said the troll child. They peered at Hiccup’s leg again, pushing up the hem of his leggings so that he could see the wooden socket, then as Toothless peered around Hiccup’s other leg their eyes went wide and they stumbled back.

“Whoa! It’s all right!” said Hiccup quickly, putting a hand on Toothless’s head. “He’s my friend. His name’s Toothless. Do you want to say hello?”

The child nodded.

“What’s your name?” Hiccup prompted.

“Felsic.”

Toothless leant in and sniffed the troll child curiously, earning another giggle before they reached out and patted him on the nose. With a snuff, Toothless pulled his head back a few inches again, then turned aside to sneeze. A tiny flicker of flame escaped him, but it did not even mark the ground.

“Say, Felsic,” said Hiccup, one eye on the mass of trolls. Anna appeared to have been wrapped in some sort of moss blanket. “Are they doing some healing for Anna? She’s not very well, and she needs to speak to someone called Grand Pabbie?”

Felsic peered over, standing on the tips of their toes to be able to see, then rocked back down and scratched their nose. “Looks like they’re getting married,” they said.

“ _What_?” Hiccup was on his feet before he had even finished saying the word. It had to be some sort of misunderstanding, of course, but right now a misunderstanding was the last thing that we needed. Leaving Felsic gawping at him, he took off towards the trolls, running as much as he dared on half-thawed muddy ground, and bumped into the back of the circle of trolls that had formed around Kristoff and Anna.

Kristoff was in one of the blankets as well, now, some tufts of long grass sticking out of his collar and leaves in his hair. He was protesting wildly while Anna, apparently unable to help it, was laughing as she was supported by two of the trolls standing one on top of the other. There were flowers trailed across her white hair, probably originally meant to be some sort of crown but now more a stray band. For a moment, it was good to see her laughing again, until her eyes opened and he saw that the right pupil and iris were both the same bright blue, paler than Anna’s own eyes.

“Excuse me, let me–” He waded through them, bumping his shins on rock at every step but not caring about the mess of bruises he was going to be. “Let me – ow!” An elbow caught him in the right calf. Hiccup switched to using his left leg first, which at least decreased the amount that was available to bruise.

He was about halfway there when he heard a startled yell from one of the trolls, and looked round to see Toothless bounding across the top of them instead. Mercifully there was laughter mixed in with the shouts, and a few waving arms from trolls who apparently wanted to be involved; Hiccup ignored them and went back to wading.

“Look, mother, please,” Kristoff said desperately to the upper of the two trolls supporting Anna. “I have _not_ bought Anna here for _anything_ like that, Hiccup is _not_ some sort of groomsman, and Toothless is _certainly_ not a bride’s attendant. _Or the other way around_ ,” he added desperately, as the troll went to speak. She seemed to prefer the red and pink gems, although she still wore a scattering of other colours, and had flowers on her head that matched Anna’s and honestly appearing to be growing there. “All right? We need to talk to Grand Pabbie, we need to talk to him right now, we–”

His mother leant in to Anna conspiratorially, but spoke loud enough to carry over him. “You should have seen him when we first adopted him. Kept being convinced that we were going to vanish on him after a while and leave him alone again.”

“That is not why we are here!” said Kristoff loudly.

“What’s going on?” said Hiccup, finally staggering into the centre of the trolls. Toothless appeared beside him at head height, which a glance down confirmed was because he was still standing on a couple of trolls who did not much seem to mind. “Who is Grand Pabbie, anyway?”

“He’s our…” Kristoff waved his hand, searching for a word. “No, can’t in Arendellen or Northur. Chief. Let’s go with Chief, all right? But he is the best with magic, we need _him_ for this.” He stepped over and pulled Anna away from the trolls, who looked delighted for a moment until he also pulled off his cloak and wrapped it around Anna in a second layer. A violent shiver wracked her again. Kristoff cupped a hand around his mouth and put his lungs behind a shout. “Grand Pabbie! We need you!”

The sound of the trolls parting was like the Whispering Deaths ripping through the ground. Hiccup grabbed at Toothless for support as the ground seemed to shake, but Kristoff simply looked relieved as he turned to face the troll now approaching them, larger than the others and carrying the most gems yet in great strings across his chest and shoulders, a stout stick in one hand.

“Grand Pabbie,” said Kristoff, audibly relieved.

The newest troll looked them all over very sternly, his eyes lingering longest on Anna. “ _Ranarkor_ ,” he said in a deep voice, thick stony brows shifting into a frown.

“No,” said Kristoff quickly. “Just… just an accident, Grand Pabbie. But we need your help. Come on,” he said to Anna, more gently. He slowly lowered himself to one knee, and she moved in jerks beside him, more collapsing to both knees than anything else. “This is–”

“I remember you,” said Grand Pabbie. “Anna of Arendelle – _Queen_ Anna of Arendelle these days, is it not?”

A murmur ran through the crowd of trolls. Anna nodded once, sharply.

Grand Pabbie reached up and ran a hand over Anna’s hair. It glowed bluish beneath his touch, unearthly, but Anna did not seem to notice as her eyes sank closed for a moment and a fainter shiver ran through her. Then she looked up, mismatched eyes shining.

“Kristoff said you helped me before. When…”

“When your sister struck you. Was it her once again?”

Anna nodded.

With a heavy sigh, Grand Pabbie drew his hand away. “I am sorry, Your Majesty,” he said, words solid and slow. “This time, I fear, there is nothing that I can do.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes/warnings in endnotes of this chapter.
> 
> The purple 'memory stones' are inspired by/taken from season 4A of Once Upon a Time (TV), but with the lore around them changed slightly.

Kristoff was the first one to recover his tongue. “What? Nothing? But you saved her last time! I know that you did!”

“Last time, the blow was to her head,” said Grand Pabbie. Anna reached up to touch her scalp where the white stripe had once been. “This one was to the heart, was it not?”

“I…” Anna shrugged jerkily. “I don’t know. The light was sort of everywhere.”

With a rumble, Grand Pabbie nodded. He folded both hands around his staff, leaning against it, and despite his stone features managed to look old, wearied. “There are many things that magic can touch, but the heart is barely among them. If you had come to me immediately, perhaps… but even that would have taken some of your love from you. If I were to remove the damaged heart now, nothing would remain to sustain you.”

“Love?” Anna frowned.

“That – oh, yeah,” said Kristoff, with a sigh. “That’s, uh, well, that doesn’t really work in Arendellen or Northur either. For trolls, well, when they say love, they don’t just mean love like humans might say. It means all of your interaction with others of your species.” He gestured with the hand that was not propping Anna up, frustration written on his features as he struggled with the words. “You don’t _get_ one troll. One troll is a rock. Trolls only exist because of their interactions with each other, their…” he shrugged. “Their love.”

And Hiccup had once thought that explaining the term _hurt_ had been bad.

Anna put her hand to her forehead, brow creasing. Ice was forming on her gloves and the shoulders of her cape despite the mild air of the valley, and the pink was gone from her cheeks. She gave a soft grunt, clenching her jaw, and did not react when Hiccup put his hand on her upper arm. Through the wool, her skin was hard, as if there was the most solid of muscles flexed beneath it.

“What happened before, then?” said Hiccup. “When she was a child?”

The old troll sighed. “When Anna was but Princess Anna, Princess Elsa struck her with her ice powers. It was a blow to the head. It spread through her memories, freezing them. It would have killed her, still, but the work was slower, eating away at her mind and not her love.” Rolling his hands over each other, he formed a sort of purple glow, some of the gems across his chest glittering and sparking.

It opened into a circle in his hands, like a round window in the air bordered in flickering light. An image came into being, the ballroom of Arendelle at night, twirling and skipping, and when Hiccup managed to focus through the dizzying movement he realised that he was watching through the eyes of a child.

Moonlight streamed in through the wide-open curtains, revealing a floor covered in ice and piled with snow. A snowman stood in front of the thrones, lopsided but smiling, and chaotic trails of footsteps and slips marked the snow’s surface.

Anna squinted at the image. “I remember this,” she breathed in a wisp of steam. “But we were… outside.”

“That was how I had to reconstruct the memory,” said the troll. In the image, the view turned away from the snowman, and turned to face a young girl.

It was unmistakeably Elsa, and Hiccup drew in his breath sharply. She was rosy-cheek, smiling, wearing a blue nightgown and a ribbon in her hair. _“Come on!”_ she said, the words clear on her lips despite the lack of sound, as she held out a hand. _“Let’s slide down!”_

The Anna of the present reached out as if she was going to take Elsa’s hand, but a much younger hand appeared in the memory and caught hold of Elsa instead. The view followed Elsa around a larger snowdrift, where with a touch of her free hand Elsa sent a glittering wave of magic across the surface before they both scrambled up it, Anna’s memory’s view filling with snow for a moment. At the top, they sat down, Elsa’s wrapping her arms tightly around Anna and squeezing, as Anna looked down, before they slid down the other side.

The image jerked, and then Anna was in the air, turning to look at the ceiling before vanishing completely beneath the surface of the snow. She erupted upwards, throwing handfuls of snow into the air and shaking with what must have been laughter.

Beside Hiccup, Anna gave a muffled sob behind her glove, and he stepped closer though he did not know what he could possibly do. The white of her right eye was seeping blue as well, the edges of the iris bleeding out into it.

In the memory, Anna jumped, barely glancing down as she landed with two feet on a pile of snow that was still shimmering into existence. From the corner of her eye, Elsa was just visible, laughing as snow swept from her fingertips in bursts as Anna jumped higher and higher, no longer looking down but up at the beams of the ceiling above her, barely visible in the dim light, then around to the top of the windows with the bright-shining moon and the green lights of the aurora.

Then there was a leap that went on a little longer than the others, further down, and Anna’s head turned to see Elsa sprawled on the ice, a flick of her hand, and then a flash of blue that filled everything before abruptly turning to black.

The troll folded his hands down over each other again, like cupping a butterfly, then parted them to reveal a gleaming purple stone, the size of his palm.

“All children, as they grow older, lose their youngest memories,” said Grand Pabbie. “You probably do not notice it by now. But at the time, your memories were fractured, shattered, the ice spreading along your memories of Elsa’s magic. I had to remove it all, or the damage would have taken root once again. With what was left, I did what I could, to leave you with good memories of your sister, and to leave your relationship intact.”

“The Silver Priests came for you?” said Hiccup. Anna was staring at the purple stone, rapt, lips trembling. It seemed that the thought of her years with her sister had driven all words from her.

Grand Pabbie nodded. “They do not approve of our kind, and they have not returned since. But they said that the Kings of Arendelle told them of us, many years ago, and when they knew that they could not save the Princess, they came for me.” He glanced at Anna again, sorrow in his eyes. “They told me that you were the only Princess. I did not let them know that I discovered their lie when I put your memories back together again.”

“Are they all in there?” said Anna finally, her voice weak. She pointed at the purple stone. “Could I get them back? The truth?”

“Returning them now would make what you are going through faster,” said Grand Pabbie.

“If I’m going to die, I want my real memories back,” Anna said through gritted teeth.

“Whoa, whoa,” said Kristoff. “We’re not having talk of death here. Grand Pabbie, there must be something.”

“There is nothing _we_ can do,” said Grand Pabbie, with a wave to the trolls around them. Despite their earlier jokes and calling, they had fallen very seriously silent. “But you… perhaps,” he said slowly. Anna looked up with a glimmer of hope. “Only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart. And it must come from your kind, not from ours.”

There was a pained moment as they looked to each other.

“Ooh!” one of the trolls, bedecked in red and pink jewels, caught at Kristoff’s sleeve. “A true love’s kiss, perhaps!” They grabbed a troll that Hiccup thought was Kristoff’s father, and kissed them noisily on the lips. There was not as much of a grating of stone as he might have expected.

“All right,” said Kristoff, the first one to recover again. “True love’s kiss. Let’s get you back to Hans.”

“Who’s Hans?” said one of the trolls.

Hiccup ignored them, and looked to Grand Pabbie. “Can you fix Toothless’s tail? I just need new fabric for it, and we can fly.”

“My mother’s good with that,” said Kristoff. He bent at the knees to put his hand on the shoulder of the troll who had kissed another, and she tore away a soppy gaze to look at him. “Can you shape some fabric to the tail of the dragon?”

His mother looked round to Toothless who, Hiccup belatedly realised, was still perched across the heads of several of the trolls. Mercifully, they did not seem to mind too much. Hiccup made the circling gesture with his hand that he usually did when asking for Toothless’s tail to saddle up, and the dragon obediently bought his tail round to the front where Kristoff’s mother only had to take a few steps to look at it. The fabric had been picked clean, apart from tiny scraps of dark grey right beside the tail, but without being prompted she also examined the intact half of Toothless’s tail, then nodded.

“Yes, I can do this. You sit down, dears, it’ll just take a moment.”

She waved vaguely, and Hiccup looked around but could not see anything other than trolls. And he was not intending to sit on them. Kristoff waved to one of the trolls, who swirled a hand over the stones on their chest and then to the ground, which erupted upwards to form a plinth around three feet high and six long.

“Here,” said Kristoff, more gently. He guided Anna to sit down, but she tried weakly to pull away from him still.

“Please,” she said, eyes fixed on Grand Pabbie. “My memories.”

He hesitated for a moment longer, then reached out and folded the stone into her hand. “It is your choice,” he said, “but you should know that it will only freeze you faster.”

“How do I get them out?” she insisted.

“Decide upon it, and they shall be yours.”

As he released her hand, she placed it against her chest, and allowed herself to settle back onto the rock plinth that the trolls had raised. There were tears in her eyes that she struggled to blink away, but she averted her gaze and Hiccup looked away in an attempt to give her a moment of privacy. Too much of this day had already involved dragging her history, and Elsa’s, out into the open.

Instead, he looked round as Kristoff’s mother held up an oval of the green mossy fabric to Toothless’s half-destroyed tail. She was talking softly to herself, almost in the cadence of a song, and drew up some of the red and pink crystals to drape across her hand as she moved it back and forth. The light that came down from them started off red, but the colour faded and the sparks that began to shape the fabric were white. The fabric reformed to match the shape of Toothless’s tail, a perfect mirror, then grew thinner and tauter even as Hiccup watched.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Kristoff, “Toothless can’t take three. But thank you, for your help. When you are next in Berk, we will repay you handsomely.”

Kristoff glanced down at the trolls. “I might be down in Arendelle sooner than you think. They’re close to the spine of the mountain. The tunnels there aren’t wide enough for the sled, but they are wide enough for me and Sven.”

“I won’t ask this of you,” said Anna, catching them both by surprise. She looked at Kristoff. “You’ve done enough. You both have,” she added, with a glance at Hiccup. “But I need to go back to Arendelle. Once I can…” she weighed the stone in her hand again.

“Here,” said Grand Pabbie, stepping forward from the crowd of trolls again. He had a single stone on a grassy strip, this one milky-white with rainbow dancing on its surface. As he passed it to Anna, its light became fainter, a slow pulse in its depths. “This will give you some guidance. It is sensitive to magic, and to the love in you. Do not allow it to go out.”

Anna looked at the pendant, then back at Grand Pabbie, and gave a very small nod. “Thank you,” she said, before slipping it over her head.

“There we go! All ready to go!” said Kristoff’s mother.

“Thank you…” Hiccup trailed off, looking at the troll.

“Bulda,” she said, still smiling.

“Bulda,” he repeated. “Thank you, for the tail.” He stretched out a hand to Anna, and she took it with an icy-cold one. “Come on, let’s go.”

 

 

 

 

 

The tail held. Hiccup had not been sure that it was going to, but the fabric held and caught the wind well as they took to the air again. They flew so high that even Hiccup felt the air become thin, and Anna mumbled something that might have been protest, but it was all that Hiccup could think of to get above the storms that still raged.

There was only one gap in the cloud now, and it was not above the North Mountain. The Valley where the trolls lived was an unnatural, ragged calm around which the winds howled and the snow fell so heavily that it struck like hail. Toothless needed no prompting to fly fast, making it even harder to breathe but cutting through the air in no time at all.

The sky was just starting to grow light on the horizon. They did not have much time before Toothless became too conspicuous, and with stolen glances over his shoulder Hiccup could not be sure how much light was still in the pendant, how much time they still had.

As he dipped below the clouds, dropping down through multiple layers at speed and hoping that this time, the tail would not freeze, the sight of Arendelle took his breath away. The harbour was frozen solid, thick white ice stretching out from the docks, while the buildings were nothing more than ragged white shapes in the snow. Fires had been lit here and there here and there, but there were hardly any figures out in the streets.

From here, the destroyed wall was even more apparent, a break in the dark line that bounded Arendelle. There, at least, there was a cluster of activity; guards, Hiccup had no doubt.

He could see plenty of areas that would work as landing places, but considerably fewer that would be feasible without being seen, even in the earliest moments of dawn. Hans would be at the Castle, most likely; perhaps it would be best to land in the gardens there, and sneak in through one of the servants’ entrances which Anna had shown him when they were young.

He was still thinking about it when he spotted movement on the far side of the gorge. Despite the danger that staying beneath the clouds created, Hiccup paused, breath catching in his throat, then fumbled in his satchel for an eyeglass, Anna clinging desperately to him.

“What is it?” she said.

“I’m not sure.” Managing to get hold of the spyglass, Hiccup peered through it, struggling to see through the whipping snow. He could make out some walking figures, some horses, and he felt a stab of terror as he caught a glimpse of metal bars, and some sort of cage. “But whatever it is, I think we want to stay away from it. Come on, let’s make a landing.”

Better than the castle gardens, he decided, would be the rocky outcrops that surrounded the castle itself. Toothless might stand out more against the ice in theory, but that side of the castle was nothing other than sea and hopefully nobody would even be expecting anything on that side.

They landed just outside the castle walls, and slid and stumbled along the length of them, on the thick ice that rimmed the rocky outcrop. Toothless stayed in the shadows of the rocks, just at the edge of the walls, hunkering down between two of the largest boulders like an oversized shadow. In the pre-dawn grey, Hiccup hoped that it would be passable as a hiding place.

There was a small jetty and a servant’s entrance that Anna had shown Hiccup as a child, and despite the slippery wooden steps they managed to scramble up towards it. It was locked, but Anna carried a skeleton key, and she fumbled it out of her top without, mercifully, having to ask Hiccup. It was freezing to the touch as she pressed it into his hands, and with his bandages he was hardly any more nimble, but he managed to get it into the lock and drag the door open against the wind.

It bought them into a narrow corridor, open on one side to a small open area but roofed over. There were torches on the wall, but they had been snuffed out, and snow was piling up in great drifts against the walls.

“This is the kitchen walk,” said Anna. She pointed to their left. “That’s the servants’ quarters. There’ll be more people there.”

And the servants were more likely to know Prince Hans’s location anyway. “All right,” said Hiccup. “Come on.”

He had one arm around Anna’s back, though he could feel that she was trying not to lean on him even as her feet dragged. They were barely half-way down the corridor, however, when a door at the far end opened and a figure hurried out, bundled in a cloak and carrying a lantern.

Despite everything, Hiccup had the urge to duck out of sight somehow, or bundle Anna away where she could not easily be seen. As it was, he shied back and pulled her away, but as the figure turned towards them they gave a relieved cry and hurried over, pushing down their hood.

“Your Majesty!” said the man revealed. He was stout, not much taller than them, with a receding hairline and kindly face.

Anna sagged against Hiccup’s shoulder. “Kai,” she said. “It’s you. Where’s Hans?”

“Your Majesty, we need to get you inside.” Kai tried to put his hand around Anna’s shoulder, but she pulled away from him and back into Hiccup. “What happened?”

“Where is Hans? I need to talk to him.”

“We need to find Prince Hans immediately,” put in Hiccup. “It’s important.”

Anna had stopped shivering now, and he knew that was a bad sign. Her shoulder was as hard as stone against him, colder than the air against his face. Whether the man recognised him, he honestly could not say, but it could simply have been that he was too relieved to see his Queen returned to ask whose company she was in.

“P-Prince Hans has gone out with the Silver Priests, Your Majesty,” said Kai, with a glance to Hiccup. “To search for – you.”

“He knows about the Silver Priests,” said Anna, voice hard. Kai looked startled. “He knows about the Trials.”

It was the worst that they could offer, surely; Anna had said that they no longer followed those rules. It took a moment before Kai rallied, and was able to reply. “They went to search for the wildling, Your Majesty. The one that caused your disappearance.”

“She didn’t…” Anna broke off, shaking her head. Perhaps she was simply unable to lie to the man when Elsa had, in a more roundabout way, been the cause after all. “I’m back. It doesn’t matter. I need Hans.”

“When they return, they were supposed to be going to the Temple,” said Kai. He swallowed. “But…”

“But what?” said Hiccup, with the best glare that he could muster.

“But I heard that there has been a stake erected, your Majesty, down by the water. As used to be done for the Trial of Fire.”

Anna’s hand closed so tightly on Hiccup’s shoulder that her fingers felt like claws digging into his skin. “We have to get there,” she said.

 

 

 

 

 

They passed the tower that would once have been the entrance to the harbour, and Hiccup was struck again by the enormity of the ice in front of them. Every boat that he could see through the storm was encased in ice, several of them pushed askew or partially buckled with the force of it. The boat from Berk, smaller than the others, had been lifted by the force of the ice, and there was no-one left in it. Evacuated, Hiccup hoped.

The snow gave them a surface over the ice for their boots to get some grip, but it made it impossible to see where they were stepping next. Anna clung increasingly to Hiccup’s arm, her grip growing tighter and colder with each yard closer to the shoreline that they made it, but they finally reached the shoreline not far away from one of the bonfires. Despite the snow, part of Hiccup was surprised that there was nobody near it – not even guards, to stop the wood from being stolen. Only ghosts made out of snow walked the streets of Arendelle tonight.

Then he saw the second stack of wood, further along the shore, and felt sick. Without Kai’s words, he would have taken it for another bonfire, but now he saw the flattened shape of it, and the single thick pole in the centre.

The Trial of Earth had been banishment to the Wildlands. Elsa had never told him what form the other Trials took, but he was starting to have a sick feeling that he knew at least one of them.

Steps that had once led into the water let them climb back onto the snow-covered streets again, even if Anna struggled with each shallow tread. The snow made it hard to see even the nearest houses, but if Hiccup listened, he thought that he could hear the sound of horses’ hooves in the distance.

“Hang on,” he said. There was not much that he could do about his foot, but his clothes were non-descript at least. He pulled off the too-large knitted wool hat that Astrid had given him, used his knife to cut two eye-holes, and then stretched it back down so that it covered most of his face and left only his mouth exposed. The last thing that he wanted was for his father to be implicated in this. “There.”

Anna frowned at him, but did not ask questions. Blue veins of ice curled across much of the right side of her face now, spreading like tree roots down from her temple, and her lips had taken on a bluish tinge. If he did not know that it was her, she might not be all that recognisable either.

As much as they could with the gale-strong winds and Anna’s faltering steps, they hurried across the open ground. Abruptly, the wind dulled with a sound like a sigh, and through the lighter snow horses and men seemed to appear out of nowhere.

“Halt!” cried the man at the front of the group. He was one of the Silver Priests, wearing a modified version of their robes with a thick gambeson built into it, and carried a sword at his side. He pointed at them. “We are under curfew. Guards!”

“No!” Anna shouted back. She pulled out of Hiccup’s arms and stumbled to the second figure emerging from the snow, a very startled-looking Prince Hans. He was bare-headed despite the cold, although wrapped in a heavy green coat, and slid down from the saddle to embrace her without pause. “Hans…”

“Anna? What happened? You…” he turned on Hiccup, though there was no sign of recognition on his face. “Are you in league with the wilding?”

“No, Hans, he bought me back, he helped me, you have to let him go,” said Anna quickly. She put her arms around his neck in clunky movements, and as he caught her weight he was forced to release the hilt of his sword.

“Your Majesty?” said one of the guards, a normal footman in his uniform looking shocked and frankly terrified. It was loud enough for the other guards to look around as well, and as they turned in shock to look at their stricken queen, a huge cage rolled into view out of the snow behind them.

Anna staggered out of Hans’s arms. Hiccup felt his knees go weak.

The cage was perhaps five feet to a side, with a metal tray for the base and bars on all other sides. In the centre, kneeling, was Elsa. Heavy green shackles held her down, enclosing her hands to the wrists, the metal having some strange sheen which indicated it was not just old copper, but something that Hiccup had never seen before.

With a cry, Anna ran over to the bars of the catch, grabbing hold of them with both hands. Elsa’s head snapped up, frozen trails of tears running down her cheeks, and she looked at Anna with momentary surprise that turned swiftly to horror. She jerked in her chains, but away, almost falling backwards before the metal stopped her from doing so. The wind around them intensified.

“I’m going to help you!” Anna shouted. She turned to the nearest of the Silver Priests. “Let her go, right now!”

Hans caught her by the arm to pull her away; she tried to struggle, but instead almost fell against him. “Anna!” Almost tenderly, he pushed her hair back from her face as she looked up at him, her hands wrapped tightly in his coat for support. “What did it do to you?”

“She didn’t do anything!” said Anna, and Hiccup knew that it was true at the same moment as knowing that it was a lie.

With steel in his gaze, Hans turned to the guards and nodded in Hiccup’s direction. “Seize them! We will question them.”

A hand landed on Hiccup’s arm. He whirled to face the guard, who had grabbed him right-handed and showed no signs of holding a weapon. Well, he didn’t exactly cut an intimidating figure. Taking a leaf from Astrid’s book, he pulled the man’s arm straight down, an unexpected direction, and then slammed the heel of his left hand against the man’s elbow.

With a surprised grunt, the man was forced to release Hiccup’s arm, and Hiccup quickly pulled out of reach. When a second made a grab for him in turn, he ducked out of reach, then planted a hard kick with his left leg to the man’s kneecap. The guard went down with a scream, and Hiccup mentally forgave Stoick for every time he had made him practise sparring over the winter and spring.

Anna, securely held by Hans, looked on in horror. “Run!” she shouted.

He could not see much of a choice. Some of the guards had by now started drawing their swords, Elsa struggled in her chains, and Anna could not break free from Hans’s grip. In this snowstorm, he would not have to run far to lose the guards. Faced with an ever-increasing number of naked blades, Hiccup did the only thing that he could, and followed Anna’s order.

It was only a couple of turns of alleys before he saw a building with an area of low, flat roof, barely above head-height. With a running jump, he caught hold of it, managing to get the slightest of footholds with his left foot to haul himself up and roll over onto his back.

The snow was so thick that he dropped down into it, and he hurriedly pushed more back to the edge to hide where he had knocked it aside. Putting a hand over his mouth in case his breath looked like as much of a cloud as it felt, he waited until he heard the guards run past, all heavy boots and clacking swords, before carefully creeping back to the edge and peering over again.

It looked clear. He dropped back down again and quickly retraced his steps, conscious of every heartbeat of time that passed. It felt like a stone in his gut when he reached the open area again and peered through the snow to see Anna being forcibly restrained by two of the guards, one of the Silver Priests standing over her and proclaiming that the wildling had distorted her mind, that it had laid a curse on her. Worse, Elsa had been removed from her cage and moved to the stake in the midst of the wood, her shackles pulled up above her head and attached to a hook at the top of the stake. Her head hung, her body limp, as if all the fight was gone from her.

“No…” Hiccup looked around desperately, seeing one of the Silver Priests holding a torch and talking to Prince Hans, as two of them fussed with the wood around Elsa. Anna was struggling, but it was growing weaker, and as Hiccup looked she gave a shudder and almost fell, ice forming spikes on the ground around her and crawling across the sleeves of the men who held her.

He burst into a run, but made it only half of the distance before he was spotted by two of the guards who descended upon him. One had his sword drawn, but did not really _attack_ , just placed it in Hiccup’s way to make him stop and duck while the other kicked his legs out from under him. He grabbed one of them before he hit the ground, making the man stumble and almost fall in turn, then felt himself hauled upright.

Without the clash of steel or the roar of dragons which he associated with fighting, there was something strangely quiet about it all, just panting breath and a grunt as he managed to get his elbow into the stomach of the man holding him. The one with the sword responded with a left hook to Hiccup’s jaw that made stars flash across his vision, and then hands were grappling with him again, and it was all that he could do to knock them away, to twist, and to slip out of his cloak when one of the guards grabbed hold of it. He threw the cloak like a net, right over the man’s head, and ran towards the stake even as the Silver Priest in the gambeson handed the torch to Prince Hans and pointed towards the foot of the pyre.

Prince Hans hesitated before accepting the torch, then looked up at Elsa with regret in his eyes. He said something that Hiccup could not hear as anything more than snatches of sound on the wind, as Hiccup wrested himself free of the grip of the guards again and narrowly ducked having his makeshift mask removed.

The wind went dead. It was so sudden that Hiccup stumbled sideways from where he had been leaning against it, and as he looked up he saw every snowflake hanging in the air, unmoving around them. The silence sucked around them, broken only by the sound of Anna struggling against the guards that held her, and Elsa’s sobs.

“Do it, your Highness!” urged the Silver Priest beside Hans. “Light it!”

There was a flash of metal in Anna’s hand, and Hiccup recognised the bright gleam, put his hand to his own hip to find that the sheath of his knife was empty. Anna clumsily slashed to her left, just catching the arm of the guard on that side and making him step back, and slid away from the second in his moment of surprise.

Hiccup pulled away from the men restraining him, stooped to pick up a handful of snow, and packed it into a ball all in the same couple of steps. Living on Berk had definitely given him a lot of practice in snowball fights, and games though they might be they did give you a sense of how to aim. He put his back into the throw, and it was still pretty solid when it slammed into the face of the second guard pursuing Anna.

The Silver Priest, seeing Hans’s hesitation, grabbed the torch back from him again. “They must be dealt with!” he shouted, voice carrying and suddenly ringing-loud in the still air, and turned to bring the torch down into the wood at Elsa’s feet.

And then Anna was in front of the Silver Priest, reaching up to stop his outstretched hand.

A hand wrapped around Hiccup’s wrist, a sword gleaming in the corner of his eye. Hans shouted; the torch swung down with its fire reflecting in the eyes of its wielder.

Elsa looked up and screamed.

There was a slap of cold. Hiccup blinked against it, and his eyelids momentarily froze together, stabbing pain into his eyes as he squeezed them shut before pulling them open again. When he looked up again, the Silver Priest had been knocked to the ground, the skin of his hand and one side of his face blackened. The torch lay extinguished at his feet. And Anna stood any icy statute, arm outstretched, eyes staring blankly at the sky.

She had turned translucent blue, hair and clothes all, light gleaming through her body. There was a terrible moment, and then Elsa screamed, the sound like ripping steel. The chains of her shackles shattered as ice broke them apart, and the metal on her hands peeled back like the petals of a flower as she wrenched them down.

In a moment she was stumbling down from among the wood, throwing her arms around Anna’s neck, and falling to her shoulder. Hiccup went to draw a deep breath, but the air was so cold that it was like a stab to the back of his throat, and he had to hold back from coughing instead. When he looked to either side he saw that the guards that had been trying to hold him had also been knocked down, exposed skin flushed red, and none of the others further away seemed to think that approaching was a good idea.

Slowly, Elsa looked up, then swayed back and cupped Anna’s cheeks. She ran her thumbs over Anna’s cheekbones, murmuring something that Hiccup had no chance of making out, then looked around her with wild eyes and her hands coming to rest almost possessively on Anna’s shoulders.

As she looked, one of the guards seemed to gather himself, and drew his sword. As he took a step forwards, though, Elsa’s hand flashed towards him, and spikes of ice ripped up from the ground to bar his way.

That had been deliberate. Even with Elsa shaking, tears streaming down her face and one arm on Anna’s shoulder, her aim had been perfect to stop the guard without hurting him.

Balling his hands into fists, Hiccup ran across to Elsa, fighting to keep his breathing shallow in the air. His eyes stung as he drew close, and she whirled to face him with fear in her eyes but he pushed his hat-mask up just a few inches, just far enough to show his eyes. She faltered, still looking wary, but lowered her hand.

“We have to go,” said Hiccup.

“I am not leaving her,” Elsa said, voice thick. Her arm tightened around Anna’s neck.

The Silver Priests were calling for her blood. The one at their feet might have been unconscious, but there were others alongside the guards, and he had little doubt that if the handful of guards nearby were not enough, the whole of Arendelle would be called down upon Elsa. Hiccup looked at her desperately.

“Go,” she said.

“I can’t lose you,” he replied.

“You can swim?” said Elsa. He looked at her in bewilderment. “Swim. You can do?”

“Yes, Elsa, but we don’t need to. Toothless is nearby, we can go, we–”

Elsa’s left hand swept towards the ground, which rose up beneath him, and the next thing that Hiccup knew he was sliding down a slope across the twenty feet or so that separated him from the water. He fell heavily to the ice below, slamming down onto his shoulder, and scrambled to his feet and turned again with a shout rising in his throat only for there to be a sharp crack, like a breaking bone. The ice parted beneath him, and he fell into the dark water with cold that sliced through him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: Anna suffers from the ice, and eventually freezes solid, as happens in the _Frozen_ movie. **Non-canon content warning** that Elsa is sentenced to the "Trial of Fire", being burned at the stake, and the Priests attempt to carry this out.


	11. Chapter 11

The water was so cold that it burned. It closed around Hiccup like a living thing, eating through his clothes, scalding on his flesh. He surfaced with a wrenching gasp, then regretted it as cold air seared down his throat and into his chest, freezing on his lips and tongue. There was a shout from one of the guards above, and the cracking sound of ice, but Hiccup could only grope at the edges of the ice around him, trying to haul himself back out of the water again. His gloves were freezing to his hands, bone-deep shivers running all the way through him in unavoidable waves.

He could not see what was going on, let alone help; that was the worst part. Hiccup grabbed the ice and tried to pull himself out, but the slick surface tilted beneath him and dumped him back into the water again, the cold like a weight dragging him down.

Something closed around his stomach. Hiccup opened his mouth to yell, losing his breath in a flurry of bubbles. He tried to thrash loose, but whatever it was held him tight and, he realised, was swimming through the water at great speed. The ice skimmed by ahead, though it was hard to tell from the stinging cold of the water. One of his hands was stripped bare by the force of the water, bandage and glove getting pulled away, and when it brushed against the thing holding him he felt warm scales in the darkness and an immediate rush of relief.

His lungs were burning when they erupted from the water, and Toothless spat him out onto the shore. Hiccup coughed up water, almost heaving, with waves still crashing over his legs when someone grabbed him under the arms and hauled him backwards. With a shout, he tried to spin and punch out at knee high, but was promptly dropped to the pebble beach.

“This is the thanks I get?”

“Astrid?” he looked up in complete bewilderment to see Astrid standing over him, wearing borrowed boots and a heavy cloak, fur-lined hood around her face. As Hiccup stared, she offered him a hand, and he took it more on reflex than actual thought as she pulled him upright.

Within seconds, his clothes were starting to freeze to his body, clinging to his skin. Hiccup put a hand over his mouth to stop breathing from hurting so much, and looked around to see that he was on the far side of the bay, the distance at least a half mile across.

“We have to help Elsa,” was all that he managed to say. “We gotta get there and… how are you here?”

Astrid nodded to the side, where Kristoff was standing with frozen blood around his nose and on the scarf pushed down around his throat. “We met,” she said.

“I was trying to find some of your people, to help you,” said Kristoff.

“I saw someone snooping around,” Astrid added.

Well, that probably explained the bloodied nose, at least. “But… over here?” said Hiccup.

Kristoff waved towards his neck. “The spine of the island opens up here as well. The tunnels are narrower, only enough for a person.”

“Well, we need to go back,” said Hiccup. If he was talking, his teeth did not chatter, but he could not do anything to hold back his shivering. “Elsa needs us.”

When he looked at Astrid again, though, the colour had drained from her face, and something close to fear – as close to fear as he had ever seen on Astrid’s face – had settled there instead. Stomach roiling, Hiccup turned to the behind him, reaching for the spyglass on his belt but not even needing it to see the turbulent sea, the boats moving as if they were on the open ocean, and the great sheets of ice that were being created.

“Sweet Odin,” said Astrid. “How powerful _is_ she?”

Perhaps when all this was over, they would be able to fly to the entire structure of ice that Elsa had made. If it still stood. For now, Hiccup looked through the spyglass, to see Elsa bringing up sheets of ice to block crossbow bolts being fired in her direction, to block the paths of men with swords or torches in their hands. Prince Hans was there, gesturing and waving with no weapon, and the Silver Priest with the blackened face and hands had staggered to his feet and was leaning on two of his subordinates.

Then the land on which they were standing on broke away, stones ripping from the ground and everyone knocked from their feet. Only Elsa remained standing, beside the ice-blue statue that was Anna – and yet he could not think of it as Anna, could not think of Anna as anything other than alive and laughing and happy and warm.

The section of stones on which Elsa and Anna stood slid down, whole, onto the surface of the sea. Dawn was breaking, throwing light in streaks over the mountaintops, as ice wrapped up in tendrils around the floe on which Elsa stood. Ice blasted from her hands against the water and broken icy surface, moving them along like skaters on a pond. The ice around them crept higher and closer, encircling them in what was almost a dome, until about halfway across the bay the dome slammed close and the outpouring of ice ceased.

“ _Parlenks_ ,” said Kristoff vehemently.

Arrows were fired after the ice dome, but they all fell short or missed, clearly at the very limit of their range.

“Come on,” said Hiccup to Toothless. He stumbled over, trying to put his shaking foot into the stirrup. “We can get over there.”

Someone tried to pull him away, but he shrugged them off without caring who it was. He had to help Elsa. By all the gods, he had to help Elsa. After everything that had happened to her, to see her sister turned to ice had to be the cruellest blow, but this time he did not intend for her to be alone in its wake.

“No!” said Astrid, horror in her voice. Hiccup’s head snapped up to see that the normal arrows had given way to burning ones, streaming like meteorites across the bay. They missed, they had to keep missing, he could only watch with horror dulling his body as they fell and fell–

One of the arrows struck the ice dome, and plunged through.

Hiccup grabbed at Toothless’s saddle, but the dragon was out of his grip in a moment and, before Hiccup could even cry out, plunged beneath the water again. Hiccup’s knees gave way, and he dropped to them on the stony shore, looking helplessly over the waves.

Heavy fabric came to rest on his shoulders, but he was too exhausted to be startled as Astrid wrapped her cloak around him, cinching it tightly. He was not sure whether it was any less cold, or whether he was just getting used to it, but his breath was still steam and his fingers had gone numb. When the ice dome in the bay went under the water, he was not even able to feel surprised.

“We should get into the trees,” said Kristoff. “They’ve got spyglasses as well. They might not be able to reach us, but they might recognise you.”

“We’re in shadow a little longer,” Astrid replied sharply.

Toothless had to bring Elsa back. That was all that Hiccup could think. He shivered again, and felt Astrid grab one of his hands and start rubbing it, only to flinch away when blood smeared across her hand.

“What happened?”

“Ice,” said Hiccup. “I cut it.”

“Should’ve asked my family,” said Kristoff, with a sigh.

Silence fell again when Hiccup did not respond, and Astrid swapped between Hiccup’s hands, grimacing when she found this one bandaged and bloody as well. Each heartbeat felt endless, until the water parted in front of them and Toothless surged out, all black wings and shedding water, to deposit two limp bodies on the shore.

“Anna?” Hiccup gasped.

Anna rolled over and proceeded to throw up water. In a heartbeat, Elsa was kneeling beside her, a hand on her back, a look of awe and terror on her face as she wrapped a hand around her sister’s upper arm.

There was no sign of ice on Anna’s skin, her cheeks pink and freckled, her eyes just as they had always been. It took him a moment longer to realise that there was no longer any white in her hair, as it had never been while he had known her. He scrambled over as well, out of Astrid’s hold and leaving her cloak behind, grabbing Anna by the shoulders and pulling her up so that they were face-to-face.

It was her. Real, and alive, and right in front of him. A laugh burst from Hiccup’s lips, and he hugged her tightly, her wet arms wrapping around him in return. He could feel her breathing, her heartbeat, the way that one of her plaits slapped him in the face as they embraced. It was her who let go first, moved back so that she was at arm’s length and then looked round to Elsa again. Elsa had tears in her eyes from more than just the water, and cupped Anna’s jaw again with a trembling hand.

“What happened?” said Hiccup. “I thought…”

“I wouldn’t let them do it,” Anna replied, without looking away from Elsa. “I loved you too much.”

Elsa burst into tears again, and it was Anna who got there first, pulling her sister to her chest and burying her face in Elsa’s hair, tears in her own eyes. They almost collapsed together, Elsa falling into Anna’s lap and clinging to her shoulders, Anna squeezing so tightly that her fingers left white marks on Elsa’s skin.

“I hate to break this up,” said Kristoff urgently, “but we really need to get out of sight. They’ll start scanning the shoreline soon just for _something_ to do, and we’ve got a dragon in plain sight.”

With his black scales, Toothless was almost certainly less visible than Elsa in her bright dress, but Hiccup held his tongue. At Kristoff’s words, Elsa looked up, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and she and Anna got to their feet together without letting go of each other along the way. Astrid grabbed Hiccup by the shoulder and pulled him considerably less gracefully to his feet, but it was only to hurry them all out of sight, and away from whatever threat might still lurk on Arendelle’s shores.

 

 

 

 

 

Once hidden within the trees and rocky outcrops, Kristoff let them stop again, perhaps as much from his own confusion as from any desire of the others to actually stop walking. Elsa and Anna still had their fingers entwined, though Kristoff had turned up a handkerchief for Elsa to use, and Hiccup had fallen into step behind them with Astrid on one side and Toothless on the other.

With the dawn, the clouds above them were quickly breaking up. It was still cold, but by the time that they were sitting down, Hiccup could no longer see his breath, and his shivering felt far more manageable.

“All right, _what_ just happened here?” said Kristoff finally, turning to them. “Last I saw, you were heading into Arendelle in search of true love’s kiss. Next I see is this.”

“True love’s kiss?” said Astrid, barely trying to restrain her disbelief.

“Long story,” Hiccup said quickly. He sighed, pulling Astrid’s cloak more tightly around himself. “We made it into Arendelle, but they were going to…” he glanced over at Elsa, who nodded shakily to him. “They were going to give Elsa the ‘Trial of Fire’,” he let disdain drip off the words. “Burn her at the stake.” Astrid looked shocked, but Kristoff only looked disgusted. “But then Anna…”

“They were going to burn Elsa, and I wouldn’t let them,” said Anna, cutting over Hiccup’s trailing words. She stood protectively, almost defiantly, beside Elsa, and Hiccup would be tempted to say that it made her look the elder of them. “I stepped into the torch. And then there was…” she paused, deflating a little, and gestured vaguely with her right hand. “This coldness. Clarity. And then the next thing that I know, I’m on some weird ice-cobble raft, Toothless’s head is sticking through the floor, and there’s a burning arrow. So,” she waved at Toothless. “It was a good time to leave.”

“You actually froze?” Kristoff looked at Hiccup. “She actually _froze_?”

Anna spluttered, but all that Hiccup could do was nod.

“The trolls warned me… they said that if that happened, there was no going back,” said Kristoff. He looked around, with total bewilderment written clearly across his features, then pulled his hat off and ran his hand through his hair. Shaking his head, he turned his back on them and walked away a few paces, paused, then changed his mind and continued walking instead.

“It’s a long story,” said Hiccup quietly to Astrid, who was still looking at him in clear shock and confusion. “Look, can you get back to my father and tell him that I’m all right? That we all are? I’m guessing that you came through the tunnels with Kristoff.”

“Yeah, Kristoff said that if you had any sense you’d fly out here.”

He sighed. “I think Toothless did better than I did on that one.” He had still been trying to get back onto the shore, and back into the fight, when Toothless had decided to remove him from the area. Cupping a hand around his mouth, he raised his voice. “Kristoff! Can you get Astrid back to Arendelle? We’ll pay extra for the nose,” he added, in case trade was still what was driving things. He had significant doubts, but it probably didn’t hurt at least.

Fingers interlinked on top of his head, Kristoff turned back round again to face them, and sighed. “Sure! Fine! I’m already involved in this anyway! You guys stay here and… and figure out how to get those off or whatever.”

The chains might have been destroyed, but there were still shackles on Elsa’s wrists. She looked down at them as if she had completely forgotten they were there, then sheepishly over at Kristoff.

“All right, we’ll work on that,” said Hiccup quickly.

With a heavy sigh, Kristoff stuffed his hat into his bag, tucked his gloves in after it, and produced the crystal from his neck. Considering she had only seen it done once before, Astrid did not look as amazed as Hiccup still felt as Kristoff walked up to the bare rock not far from them, rolled the crystal between his hands, and then started painting light across the stone in the same manner as the trolls had done. If with a little more concentration on his face. This tunnel was not so high, perhaps only five feet, and nowhere near as wide, but Kristoff did not look at all surprised. Perhaps he was used to ducking.

Astrid hesitated for a moment, then grabbed Hiccup by the shirt and dragged him to her. It gave him just enough warning to expect the kiss that she planted on his lips, and he managed to brush a hand against her side and peck a kiss back before Astrid released him, backed away a few steps, and seemed to have to tear her eyes away before she could turn and follow Kristoff. It put a pang in his chest, but relief as well, that he had managed to come back to her at all.

He watched her follow Kristoff into the tunnels, and the rock grow closed behind them again, before turning back to Anna and Elsa. A look of utter delight was on Anna’s face.

“Is she your betrothed?” said Anna, before Hiccup could even open his mouth. “Is that what you were talking about, saying that Elsa should tell the story? Was that Dagur?”

It was worth it, somehow, to see Elsa smile for the first time in what felt like far too long. As Hiccup opened and closed his mouth like a fish, while Anna looked hopeful, Elsa eventually broke and giggled, and it made Anna look round.

“What?”

“That was Astrid,” Hiccup managed. “Certainly not Dagur. And we’re certainly not betrothed, that’s…” he could feel himself going red, skin going hot, even as he tried to keep a straight face. “Seriously, that is the furthest thing from anyone’s mind right now. Come on, let’s have a look at those…”

He trailed off, looking at the ground. It was nothing spectacular, just a layer of pine needles occasionally broken through with grass or mud. Sven was nosing at a small bush that was growing in one of the gaps in the trees, nibbling at the leaves. The fresh, green leaves.

“There’s no snow,” said Hiccup. He was aware as soon as he said the words of how absurd they were, how utterly he was stating the obvious. But he turned to scan the ground around them, then the treetops, then up to the sky that was now a bright, cloudless blue. It was even warm, enough that his clothes were starting to dry out and that they were only vaguely uncomfortable now. “There’s no snow _anywhere_ ,” he said again, turning back to Anna and Elsa.

Elsa looked around them as well, disbelief written across her features, her hand tightening on Anna’s. It took Anna a moment longer, then she smiled, slow at first but growing until it seemed that it would burst out of her, shoulders lifting and eyes shining as she took Elsa’s face in both her hands.

“See!” said Anna. “I knew you could do it.”

“I – I do not…” Elsa stammered. “I do not know how. Perhaps it is not–”

“You did it!” Anna interrupted her, laughing with delight. “Don’t you see? When we were kids, you could always control…”

She stopped abruptly, frowning, and reached into her bodice. There was a moment where she fished about, sticking out her tongue slightly, and Hiccup averted his eyes as she rearranged her bosom in the attempt to find whatever she was after. Then she grimaced, and drew out a handful of purple sand, which trailed between her fingers and away.

“What is it?” said Elsa, catching some of the sand and peering at it.

“The trolls gave it to me,” said Anna. Rubbing it between her thumb and fingers, she did not seem to see the look of surprise that Elsa gave her. “It was my memories, of us, when we were children. I must have…” she smiled again. “I must have used it by accident. I _remember_ , Elsa!” she laughed, and grabbed Elsa to hug her again. “I remember it all! I…” she nosed against Elsa’s shoulder for a moment. “I’m so sorry. It was me who wanted to play that night. It was always me who wanted you to use your magic.”

“I am confused,” said Elsa, meeting Hiccup’s gaze over Anna’s shoulder.

“Uh…” he rubbed his brow, and tried to figure out how he could possibly simplify it. “After the accident, the trolls saved Anna by taking away her memories of your magic. I’ll explain the trolls later,” he added quickly. “They kept the memories in this stone, about so,” he gestured the size with his fingers, “and they gave it back, last night. They said that when Anna decided she was ready to have the memories back, it would give them to her.”

“You did not remember?” said Elsa, against Anna’s hair.

Anna shook her head, nearly headbutting Elsa, then caught herself and drew back. “No,” she said. “And I am so, so sorry. I–”

“You were a child,” said Elsa firmly. She went to stroke Anna’s hair, but the manacle still around her wrist got in the way and she drew her hand back sheepishly. “You did nothing wrong.”

“You were a kid as well,” said Anna.

Hiccup pulled Astrid’s dryish cloak off his shoulders, then his own wetter one, and spread the latter over the ground first in a patch of sunlight. Every time he had come to Arendelle, he had been struck by how much warmer the summers were than Berkian ones, without the wind to chill them, and it was coming back with a vengeance now. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s sit down, and actually have a look at that metal. I’m sure I can get them off.”

“Blacksmith,” said Elsa to her sister.

Anna grinned. “I know. And did you see the _knife_ he had? I mean, it cut through wood! It…” she trailed off, dropped Elsa’s hand, and patted herself down. “Oh, no. I took the knife. Did I drop it? I don’t remember having it when I stopped the torch.”

Clearing her throat, Elsa reached to her side. Ice against ice had rendered the sheath on her hip almost invisible, but as her hand brushed against it a little of the ice thawed away to reveal the hilt of the Gronckle iron knife. She drew it, turned it in her hand, and very carefully offered it back to Hiccup. “It was dropped,” she said. “I thought you would want to keep it.”

“There are two,” said Hiccup to Anna. “The other one is Elsa’s. You should meet Meatlug some time, she’s the one we really have to thank.”

“I thought your blacksmith was a man?”

Hiccup snorted with laughter again, relief and tiredness and happiness all swirling together in a strange, draining way in his chest. He sheathed the knife, buckled it into place this time, and spread the dry cloak over the damp before dropping down onto it with a groan. His right foot was vaguely sore, but as soon as he thought about his left leg he realised how chafed it was. “Might have to take it easy. Don’t want to go back onto crutches again,” he said, with a glance to Elsa. She smiled sympathetically. “Come on,” he said once again, and patted the blanket beside him.

It was Anna who joined him first, plopping down cross-legged on the corner of the cloak and looking up at Elsa with a delighted smile, as if this was all she had been thinking about these last eleven years. Elsa knelt more cautiously on what remained of the cloak, the three of them still almost knee-to-knee like conspiring children, and carefully rested her hands in the gap between them.

Hiccup lifted one up carefully, and was shocked by the weight of them. Where the Gronckle iron was as light as wood in his hands, this was heavier than iron, and he had to adjust his first lazy grip to properly raise it from the ground. The metal shone dully, a smooth even green, with an intact ring around Elsa’s wrist and four peeling-back sections sprouting from it. To judge by the shape of the sections, and the bands still adhering to some of them, rivets torn clean out, there must have originally been four triangles shaped together and sealed into pairs to make two semi-spherical sections. Those had then been jointed together, and when Hiccup turned the shackle carefully around Elsa’s wrist he found a keyhole on one side and a hinge, set almost flush to the metal, against the other.

“There we go,” he said. Hinges were usually a weak point. He drew his knife, set the point to the fine joint between the pieces of metal, and tried to worm it between. The knife was sharp, but not particularly narrow in profile, and he was not too disappointed when he could not get much traction; he simply moved the knife to the hinge and cut through the thinner metal of the join.

Or at least, he tried to.

The knife scraped across the surface of the metal with a slick ringing sound, and he snatched it back hurriedly before it caught Elsa’s arm. Doing his best to look calm in the face of her concerned look, he tried again, this time with a little more pressure and quite a lot more care, to cut through the metal in the same way that he knew Gronckle iron was quite capable of cutting through steel. Nothing happened, even when he caught himself pushing hard enough to press the shackles back against Elsa’s wrist.

“How did you get this part open?” he said finally, letting out his breath with a huff and gesturing to the curled triangular sections. Elsa gave him a huge-eyed look, and he shook his head. “Sorry, stupid question. And rhetorical. Means I’m not expecting an answer,” he added, not sure that he had used that word in front of her in the last year or so. “That is weird. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Putting down his knife, he lifted up the shackle in both hands, Elsa obligingly raising her arm so that he could look more closely at the edges of the sections. He tested one finger against it, and snatched it away when he felt that it was sharp enough to cut.

“All right,” he continued breezily. “I guess that means we go for what’s proven to be able to break it.”

“What is that?” said Elsa cautiously.

Anna poked her in the knee. “You!” she said, before Hiccup even needed to. “I mean, that knife cuts oak, but it can’t cut whatever this is, but you managed to get it open all the same!” she said all in one breath. Elsa blinked at her wordlessly.

“Pretty much,” said Hiccup. He might have put it a bit more slowly, knowing that Elsa still had days when she struggled with the quick-fire way that some people on Berk spoke, but Anna had at least followed the same train of thought. “Here.” He put down the shackle and turned it so that Elsa’s wrist, her left, was turned upwards with the hinge exposed. “Now, we’re not going to brute force it like when you broke me out of the jail.” Anna looked surprised, but for now he ignored it. “But this metal was forced outwards, which means that it might have been the pressure of the ice from your hands that found the weak points, all right?”

Elsa nodded, though she looked distinctly like she was refraining from judging Hiccup’s plan just yet.

“So, you can probably use this hand,” he tapped her left palm. “You see the gap in the metal, there? It’s fine, but it’s just enough to see. What you need to do is get your ice into that gap, and then make it bigger, so it levers the metal apart. Does that make sense?”

“I think so.” Elsa looked to Anna, through, a slight line appearing between her brows as she drew them together. “But I am not sure that I can control it so well.”

“Remember when we were kids, and you made that little ice statue of father? You got his moustache _perfect_ ,” said Anna, squeezing her knee.

It made Elsa breathe a laugh, dropping her chin to her chest for a breath or two. Hiccup held his tongue, waiting, until finally she nodded and raised her eyes to him. “All right. I will try.”

“You can do it,” he said softly, with one more brush of his fingers against her palm before he pulled his hand away.

Elsa looked to her hand, shifting it down a little so that the base of her palm pressed against the metal. Ice formed on her fingertips; her expression twitched towards a frown, but then the ice spread down her fingers, across her palm in low rough spikes, and started to follow the veins of her wrist into tendrils down her forearm. She took a deep breath, and the ice sharpened, shifting from opaque white to translucent blue and the points growing. There was a grating sound, and the metal shifted, ice spilling out around its edges.

Pressing her lips more tightly together, Elsa curled her hand into a quick fist, and the ice around the heel of her hand and her wrist rippled and juddered like waves pushed against a cliff. The thin black line of the join between the two pieces of metal widened until blue glinted through it, and Anna pressed her hands together, touching the tip of her nose with her fingertips, until with a grunt of effort Elsa forced her ice through the gap altogether, pushing the two pieces of metal apart with a clang.

Anna gave a squeal of delight, and Elsa smiled at her own hand with a look of wonder as the ice faded away again to reveal the metal forced at least two inches apart, wide enough for her to squirm her hand out of the gap formed. There was a red mark around her wrist, the beginnings of a bruise, but the skin was not cut and Anna scooped up the hand in both of hers to press a kiss to the knuckles.

“You did it,” she said. “I knew you could! I knew…” she threw an arm around Elsa’s shoulders and hugged her all over again. Shock still crossed Elsa’s face at the contact, but she did not shy from it, and after all this time Hiccup could only see it as an astonishing victory. Anna drew back, holding Elsa’s hand and almost shaking it in her enthusiasm. “Now the other one, yeah?”

With a breathless half-chuckle, Elsa looked to Hiccup, who simply nodded. Something told him that letting her do this herself would be far better than trying to take over and manage what was simply a repeat of something she had already shown she could do. This time, Elsa seemed less nervous as she focused on the ice, curled her hand straight into a fist, and called up the ice around her wrist more quickly and smoothly than before. It took only seconds before she had broken through the second shackle, and before the ice had even fully faded she was getting her hand out, scratching her hand on the metal on the way through and not looking as if she cared one whit.

Hiccup quickly pulled the shackles away, dragging them to the corner of the blanket where they were almost hidden behind his feet anyway. Elsa was looking at her own hands as if she had never seen them before, amazement written on her features, and she jumped when Hiccup reached across to take her hand.

“You’re free of them,” he said firmly. “And now you know that you can do it.”

If she could break this mystery metal, he thought privately, he was not sure that there was a chain in existence that could stand up to her magic. Tears appeared in Elsa’s eyes, but she was still smiling, and when he squeezed her hand she squeezed back in turn.

Anna yawned hugely, so much that her eyes watered and she looked embarrassed. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Not used to sleeping on tree branches. On!” she added quickly, as Elsa looked surprised. “On, not in! Not in a tree!”

“Knowing me, I would have fallen out,” said Hiccup, to break Elsa’s astonished stare. “We just put down some branches to keep warm, so we weren’t on stone.”

He had seen Elsa doing much the same thing in the cove, and she nodded in understanding, although she still watched as Anna rolled her shoulders back. Something clicked. “Ohh, that feels better,” mumbled Anna, switching to rolling her wrists instead.

“I’ll be honest, I do want to sleep for about two days,” Hiccup admitted.

“Ack, me too,” said Anna. “But I need to deal with the Silver Priests first, right? I swear, I am going to kick them out of Arendelle, but first I am going to make them tell me every single thing that they have done for the last hundred years.” She paused, the venom that had been swelling in her voice ebbing away again. “Though I might keep the schools. More people are learning to read and write because of them.”

“Berk will support you, if you need us to,” he said. Having walked around the clearing several times and sniffed what seemed like every tree in line of sight, Toothless finally padded over and flopped down with his head between Hiccup and Elsa. He rumbled to himself, and Hiccup reached over to rest a hand on his head. “I’m sure of it. When Elsa told my father about what had happened… he wasn’t happy. He was thinking of speaking to you about it, if he could. He said that he was surprised that the King, I mean, your father – he liked your father. He considered him a friend. He was surprised just by knowing what happened.”

And that, of course, had been before Hiccup knew what he now did. He had the feeling that he was going to cause Stoick a few more grey hairs before this was through, once he found out exactly who Elsa was, and how high the Silver Priests’ power went.

“If they can do this to the Crown Princess,” said Hiccup, making Elsa avert her eyes, “they’re far too dangerous. We’ll support you. And I guess I’m saying that as the chief’s son, not just as your friend,” he added with a shrug.

Anna reached up to toy with one of her pigtails. “I guess that means that you should be Queen, really,” she said. For a beat, Elsa did not respond, then her eyes went wide and she actually drew back slightly. “I mean, you are older than me.”

“No, no,” said Elsa quickly, almost frantically. “I can not do that. I have seen a Chief, and his work. They say to be Queen is more. I do not speak Arendellen, even!”

“With how fast you learnt Northur, the Arendellen wouldn’t be the problem,” said Hiccup. But he did have to agree with Elsa’s knee-jerk response. “But you don’t know politics and etiquette like Anna does. I know what you’re saying, Anna,” he said, “but I think that you’re in a better place to be Queen, right now. Elsa just doesn’t have your education.”

“My _right hand_ ,” said Anna, the Arendellen almost an endearment. Elsa’s lips parted, and a look of recognition crossed her face. “When we were kids. You said I’d be your right hand, when you were Queen,” she raised her right hand slightly as she spoke. “So you can be my right hand, instead. Or maybe my left. You are still left-handed, right?”

Elsa frowned at the flurry of words. “Yes,” said Hiccup, on her behalf. “She’s the only one who fights with the same hand as me, out of all of my friends.”

“I feel like the odd one out,” said Anna, making it sound like cheek. “But… all right. I see what you mean. And you’re sure your father will be all right with this?”

“Yes,” said Hiccup. “To be honest, we didn’t like the Silver Priests much anyway for talking like they did about our gods. But hearing about this?” he waved in the direction of the city. “You’ll have Berk on your side.”

Most of it, at least, but Anna did not need to be worried with such details. There would still be a few who were uncomfortable with magic, no doubt, and probably some like Mildew who almost seemed to stir up trouble for the sake of stirring up trouble. But on the other hand, it had been a generation since Berk had been to war, and some of their number would probably be spoiling for a fight. If it came to blows, Berk would be glad to bring its swords and axes to bear.

“All right.” Anna took a deep breath. “The first thing I’ll need to do when we get back is call off the curfew and get the guards off their patrols. It won’t be a good idea to do anything while people are frightened. Get all the Silver Priests into their temple, make sure,” she swallowed, “make sure that they don’t have anyone there that they think has magic. I might need to talk to my council to see how many of them believe what the Silver Priests have been saying…” she grimaced for a moment. “They’ve been good men, mostly. But I can’t have them if they’re doing that. I may not be twenty-one yet, but there are laws which let me overrule my council if the safety of Arendelle is threatened by an outside force.”

“That’s what I mean by knowing politics,” said Hiccup.

Before Anna could reply, there was a scraping, rocky sound, and they looked over to the clear area of rock in time to see light creep through it and the rock fade away, to reveal the narrow tunnel beneath. Kristoff ducked out, tucking away his pendant as the rock sealed itself behind him again, but he looked shaken, eyes darting and posture wary.

“What is it?” said Hiccup, getting to his feet. “Do we need to go back to Arendelle?”

“More like, you can’t go back,” said Kristoff. With a soft cry, Anna jumped to her feet as well, and Elsa scrambled after them. “The snow is gone, but it’s chaos. Supposed to be still under curfew, but I saw at least one fight between people and guards. Your friend,” he said to Hiccup, “almost got herself arrested just trying to get to the others; I had to say that she wasn’t able to get back to the boats through the snow, and I’d given her shelter. Said I lived on the edge of town. Luckily the guard didn’t understand what she was calling him,” he added, although he didn’t sound in the least bit disapproving of whatever Astrid had been coming out with.

“If that’s going on, I _need_ to go back,” said Anna.

“You’ll get arrested too,” said Kristoff flatly. As Anna protested, he added: “Queen or not. They’ve already arrested Prince Hans, for not killing her,” he nodded to Elsa, “when he had the chance. They said that she’s done so magic on you, and that you need to be found so they can save you. You,” he turned to Hiccup, “are being called a wildling as well, though I don’t think they recognised you at least, and you,” to Elsa, “I just wouldn’t go there. Your friend’s going to tell your father that you’re going to have to meet him back in Berk. I can get you there no problem,” he said, with a gesture to the pendant around his neck.

“I can’t leave my Kingdom!”

“Right now, it’s not yours. It’s the Silver Priest’s. They’ve got Weselton’s men as well as Arendelle’s, and they’ve got people scared.”

Hiccup saw Elsa’s flinch, and stepped across to put a hand on her back. She was shaking. “Is there any sign of things calming down soon?” he said.

“No,” said Kristoff. “From what I saw, it’s getting worse.”

“We’ll get you back soon, I promise,” said Hiccup to Anna. She huffed, but didn’t seem able to find words. “The last thing that I want to do is put any of you in danger, all right? And bear in mind, if we’re not coming by boat,” he rested a hand on Toothless’s back, “we can get back here in a few hours. Come back to Berk for now, all right? We’ll keep our ear to the ground, and come back once it’s safe.”

He could see the conflict in her face, as she looked over her shoulder like she could see through the lines of trees, then round to Elsa. Then her jaw set, and she reached out and took her sister’s hand. “All right. Let’s go. For now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the biggest canon divergence of all for Frozen. Shit just went down. One more chapter of this arc left, and then we'll be into the second half of the fic!


	12. Chapter 12

This time, when Kristoff opened up the tunnels into the mountainside, he weighed the crystal in his hand afterwards and grimaced. Inside the tunnels, it now felt cool, though still not unpleasantly so, and Hiccup had hiked in worse conditions and wetter clothes. At least now they had Toothless and Sven to carry their things.

Kristoff explained the tunnels to Elsa as they entered them, in curt sentences about crystals holding magic and those who used them only really needing to know the bare bones of how. He had no magic himself, he said, and her face fell slightly, but for the most part she seemed to not know what to think of someone else who had any knowledge of magic at all.

“So these tunnels lead all the way to Berk?” said Hiccup, as Kristoff fell into awkward silence. It earnt him a nod. “Are we going to be able to step out of them along the way? I’ve no provisions left, and I don’t think that bag,” he pointed to the one strapped to Sven’s back, “will hold enough for half a moon.”

“It won’t take that long,” Kristoff replied, slowing for a pace or two to drop alongside Sven and pat the reindeer on his strong shoulder. “These tunnels are… I don’t know quite how they work. But it should be three days, four at the outside. Depends how fast you’re up to walking,” he added, looking them over.

Hiccup looked down at himself guiltily. He was still damp, though that was not too much of a problem as long as they kept moving, and he would be able to dry out his foot properly once they stopped. Anna’s heavy dress was a little worse, and kept slapping against her legs as they walked, but she did not seem to care; for an Arendellen, and the Queen at that, she had strength to her to be able to have been walking for the last days already.

A look at Elsa, though, struck him in the chest again. Astrid’s cloak sat on her shoulders, but for the most part she was clad only in ice. It had spread to cover her shoulders and arms, like cobwebs weaving together, her feet still bare. She did not seem to notice, though.

“We’ll be fine,” said Anna firmly, then stifled a huge yawn.

“Sure,” said Kristoff.

“We’ll still need to get water from somewhere, though,” Hiccup pressed. “And if we’re walking, we’re going to need food.”

“I’ve got some traps,” said Kristoff finally. Hiccup just caught sight of the roll of his eyes. “We can walk until you tire, then I’ll step out and get something. It shouldn’t be that hard. Probably find some frozen rabbits, if nothing else.”

“The boar, on the other hand, probably didn’t even notice,” added Hiccup dryly.

“I think that would be too big to bring back anyway.”

Kristoff declined any further comment, and Hiccup was starting to feel too tired to continue taking the lead in anything resembling a conversation. With nothing to distract him, every step with his left leg was becoming uncomfortable, and if he stopped paying attention then he found himself starting to limp on that side. Letting his fingers brush against Toothless helped, but he was hardly in the mood for three days of hiking.

“So,” said Anna, “what’s it going to be like, in Berk? Are there lots of people? We’re not going to tell them that I’m the Queen, are we?”

Hiccup cocked his head, frowning at her.

“I mean,” Anna continued, colouring and fiddling with her skirt with her free hand, “it’s not like I dislike being Queen, it’s just that, well, people start to treat you in a certain way. And it can get really frustrating.” She sighed. “Some of the guards, at least, didn’t do it because they knew me when I was a kid. So it’s mostly them that taught me to fight. It’s not like they’d hurt me!” she added hurriedly, as Elsa looked round. Hiccup had a suspicion that had not been exactly what had caught Elsa by surprise, but he held his tongue. “They were just more willing to actually spar with me at all.”

“She’s good enough to beat me up,” said Hiccup. “Three years ago, at least.”

“You want another round when we get to Berk?” Anna teased. “Oh! Maybe you could lend me another Night Fury! Then we’d be even!”

Unable to help it, Hiccup laughed. “That’s… uh, sorry,” he tried to restrain himself, even as laughter kept threatening to leak out. “Toothless is the only Night Fury that we know of. So far, at least.” He brushed a hand over Toothless’s back. “And I’m not sure how the other dragons would take to it. Hookfang, maybe.” If for no other reason than to annoy Snotlout. “I’d usually say that Astrid would be willing to lend you Stormfly, but I get the feeling she’s not going to be too happy with me after this.”

“The one who kissed you?” said Anna dubiously.

“Did I tell you about Stormfly?” said Hiccup. There was no way that he was going to have this conversation with anybody, but he was especially not going to have it while Kristoff was looking uncomfortable a few paces ahead of them. For both their sakes. “I mean, I told you what a Nadder was, right?” He waited for Anna to nod. “Well, Stormfly is a Nadder. She lived in the arena for three years, actually. Pretty tough girl. Guess that’s appropriate…”

He found himself talking about each of the dragons in turn, from the original ones from the arena, to the hatchlings born or adopted just that Snoggletog, to the Thunderdrum now living in their woodshed. It did not surprise him in the slightest that Anna still found the idea of the hatchlings adorable the second time around, even when he impressed upon her that they were all heading for being two feet long, and that the Nadders were starting to get to be all wings and legs, gangly things that tripped over themselves and each other. She only found this cuter.

Inside the tunnels, it was impossible to be sure how long had passed, a second wind seeming to seize all of them as they fell into the rhythm of walking, and Hiccup talking about each of the dragons in turn, as individuals and not just their species. He talked about the longest storm of the winter, where they had all been snowed in for several days, and Astrid had ended up climbing out through her roof to trudge over to Hiccup’s house, force his window open, and vent her frustration that her father had trained Smokey to nip her mother’s rear in passing, and that the novelty showed no sign of wearing off. He talked about his socks, and Johann’s hat, and the discovery that Fishlegs had taught the hatchlings to play fetch which had explained a lot. He talked until his mouth was dry and his throat hurt, and it still felt amazing to talk about not just his human friends, but his dragon ones as well.

It was Elsa who faltered first, stumbling, though Anna caught her faster than a blink. She cupped Elsa’s face, worry written in every line. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“It’s nothing,” said Elsa, but she was audibly tired.

Kristoff must have heard it to, as he stopped, and with just a touch of his hand turned Sven to stand sideways across the tunnel, blocking any further passage. “All right, I think that’s a good argument for stopping there. Sit down. I’ll open up a tunnel in a minute, find a springline, and bring you in some wood. You make a fire,” he nodded to Hiccup.

Elsa shook her head, arms wrapped across her chest. “No,” she protested. “You do not have to stop for me. I am fine.”

“This isn’t a forced march,” said Kristoff, though his tone suggested that it was a forced stop. He tapped Sven’s back, so quickly and lightly that even Hiccup almost missed it. Without Kristoff looking round, Sven plodded over to the edge of the tunnel, turned around on the spot like a dog, and then lay down. “See? Sven needs a rest anyway. All that pulling the sled. You guys stay with him. I’ll go alone.”

There was a definite note in his voice that it would be a relief to get some time to himself again, and Hiccup was not going to press the issue. He nodded, turned to the women, and smiled apologetically. “I have to admit, I could do with sitting down.” That part was perhaps more true than he would have immediately thought. “My leg is not happy.”

He slumped against the wall, then slid down it, the rock rough but not scraping through his back. The floor was mossy, but not actually damp, and surprisingly comfortable. He closed his eyes for a moment, and felt a wash of tiredness, the sleepless night catching up with him again. Quickly, he opened his eyes again. Falling asleep was not in his plans.

“Come on,” he said, waving to Anna and Elsa. “Sit down with me, otherwise I just look lazy.”

They looked at each other before either willingly lowered herself to the ground, as if they were checking for permission. Anna bent first, then Elsa followed her to the ground, the former dropping down cross-legged while the latter tucked her legs up beneath her. Elsa’s feet were muddy and, Hiccup realised grimly, bruised. A pity that Astrid had run out of spare pairs of boots.

“We’ll be back soon, from what Kristoff says,” said Hiccup. “I can’t lie, I would mud-wrestle Snotlout for a hot bath. But I will be a gentleman.” He tried a smile. “You get first shout. Toothless is good at heating the water, and I will shoo my father and Gobber out of the house as well.”

Anna sniffed her armpit, grimaced and nodded. “Yeah, I think I’ll take you up on that,” she said. She nudged Elsa with her elbow. “You a fan of hot baths?”

There was a haunted look returning to Elsa’s eyes, though, and she did not respond. When Hiccup reached over as if to take her hand, she flinched, though she did allow him to rest his hand over hers. “What is it?” he said.

She rubbed her furrowed brow. “Arendelle was… all ice,” she said. “What of Berk?”

“I’m not that sure Berk noticed,” said Hiccup, not entirely joking. “Snow in the summer is actually not unheard of.”

He was not sure that he would ever get used to the weary, almost pitying expression that she wore when she looked at him. “Hiccup. This summer was not cold. Not before now. And then I…”

“If Arendelle can handle a bit of snow, I think that Berk can,” he said, before her trailing off could become too painful a silence. “Beside, when all’s said and done, it was the Silver Priests’ fault. I don’t want you feeling guilty for this.”

Even as he said it, he suspected that it was already too late for that, but it did not make his desire any less sincere. The fear flitting around Elsa was almost visible, like the wind trying to get in through the cracks of a house in winter. He wanted to be sure that the fires of her confidence were well-banked first.

Perhaps it was a good thing that she went to reply, but was cut off by a huge yawn that she completely failed to suppress. Before Hiccup could say anything, Anna squeezed her sister’s shoulder.

“You should sleep,” she said, then brightened, pulled off her cloak, and bundled it up to form a cushion in her lap. “See? You could sleep in my lap, like I used to sleep in yours when you were children!”

From the twitch of Elsa’s lip, she may well have been tempted, but she shook her head. “No. I am not sure… it would be cold,” she said instead. “But thank you.”

Anna swallowed, but nodded. “Have this anyway,” she said, offering the cloak. The ground isn’t that bad, but…”

She broke off, with a chuckle that sounded slightly forced, but Elsa managed a breath of laughter as well. “I have this one,” she said, tapping Astrid’s cloak on her shoulders.

For a moment, Elsa hesitated, then she leant over and hugged Anna, gingerly and not at all close but still a hug. Anna looked as if she was about to burst into tears, then closed her eyes, pressed her lips tightly together, and put her face to Elsa’s shoulder for a moment. As soon as Elsa began to pull away, she dragged a smile back onto her face again, and shuffled round to sit next to Hiccup against the wall.

“You know,” she said, voice sounding just a little shaken, “I never thought I’d meet a dragon, but I guess I thought maybe I’d see one someday. I never expected the trolls, though.”

“I used to go looking for trolls, when I was a kid,” he replied. “Do they appear in your fairy stories, as well?”

Anna nodded. “They aren’t exactly like _that_ , though.”

“Nor are dragons, in the stories,” said Hiccup. He watched Elsa hesitate, before setting her cloak-pillow down beside Toothless, probably close enough that she could feel the warmth that he produced. He had a suspicion that Toothless would extend a wing over her before too long, although he was not going to say anything. Elsa sat down, went as if to turn away, then cast a shy glance towards Hiccup and Anna before turning back and lying down facing towards them. She closed her eyes tightly, though, and put one hand up as if to shield them.

“Do you really have fairy tales, then?” Anna leant her head back against the stone wall, sprawling her legs out in front of her and undoing the clasp of her cloak. “I didn’t think they were a Viking thing.”

“Stores, fairy _tales_ ,” he shrugged, weighing the words back and forth, then saw her grin. “All right, yeah, we don’t really have them. We have stories about the gods, instead. I mean, it’s not the same, since fairy tales aren’t real, but it’s what we grow up on.”

“Trolls are real, apparently,” said Anna.

She had a point there.

 

 

 

 

 

Kristoff returned before too long at all, with fresh water, a couple of rabbits, and a satchel full of plants. He deposited it in front of them without preamble and dodged back out of his temporary tunnel entrance again, reappearing within seconds with an armful of wood and a couple of horse mushrooms. As his portal closed, he picked out one particular among the plants, pulled a small bag from Sven’s pack, and told Hiccup to sprinkle the powder over his injured hands and bind the plant leaves around it; apparently when put together, the two would work to heal his palms within a day. A useful trick, Hiccup had to admit, and probably more so when you harvested ice using sharp implements in the middle of nowhere.

The smell of cooking was apparently enough to wake Elsa from her sleep, and she joined them to eat once Kristoff had skinned the rabbits and Hiccup and Anna made the fire. She was still quiet, but seemed better for even a little sleep, and Hiccup managed to turn the conversation to comparing Arendellen, Marulosen, Northur and troll words for various plants and mushrooms. Even Kristoff looked vaguely interested at that point, and Anna was the only one surprised by how similar the Arendellen and Marulosen words were. When she could identify things more exactly than calling them a mushroom, at least.

Kristoff reported that it was the middle of the day outside, and suggested that they all catch some sleep before walking any further. The tunnels, he pointed out, were probably the safest place on the island. Uncomfortable with the idea of all of them asleep at once, Hiccup responded that they should keep watching, at least one at a time.

“You are such a Viking,” said Kristoff.

He allowed the watches to be taken, though, and when they had all slept, and woken to eat the rest of the rabbit and grumble about various pains, they continued on again. They talked about nothing in particular, childhood stories and mishaps, Anna talking about all the accidents she had managed to get into while in the castle, Hiccup responding with his own scrapes and his father’s fairly continual despair. Somehow, Kristoff was able to tell when night came, and this time they all exited for a short while to collect water, forage, and rest.

Hiccup had never been deep into the Wildlands. It was never quite clear where they started, though the cove would probably be considered part of them by most of Berk, albeit a relatively safe part. The northern swamps were generally safe from Wildlings as well, because you had to have a Viking’s foolhardiness to enter them without serious care. Runa was one of few who went in regularly, and that was to seek out specific plants for Gothi; Astrid had made it clear over the years that she intended to explore them as well.

At dusk, the Wildlands were pretty, and quiet, without the smell of smoke and sheep and Viking that always permeated Berk. They smelt more of the forest than of the sea, and even when he closed his eyes the only sounds were the others with him, the wind in the trees, and the stream not all that far away.

“All right, fine,” said Kristoff, over the fire they set into a hollow in the ground as the sky grew darker and the stars more uncountable above them. From time to time over the day, Anna had mentioned Hans, and Elsa looked curious. “Tell her about your _fiancé_.”

He used the Arendellen word, with a slight exaggeration of the accent as he leant back against Sven and put his hands behind his head. Elsa frowned. “ _Fiancé_?” she echoed. Her accent showed, drawing it out from _klosal_ into _kluusal_.

“Betrothed,” said Hiccup. “They’re going to be married.”

It took a moment to sink in, and then Elsa gave a slow, amazed smile, and turned to Anna with wonder in eyes. “Married?”

Kristoff rolled his eyes, and Hiccup resisted the urge to kick him. At least partially because it would involve moving, and he had already taken his left foot off for a while.

“We met a year ago,” said Anna. “As I was coming out of mourning for, well, yes.” She took Elsa’s hand, and with the other tucked her hair behind her ear. “There weren’t a lot of Kingdoms who would even give Arendelle the time of day, really, and those that did come usually wanted to talk to my Council, not to me. As if Arendelle never had a Queen before,” she added, with a wave of her hand that almost flicked Toothless on the nose. He snorted. “Whoops, sorry.

“So anyway, Hans comes with his brother to represent the Southern Isles, because they’re like our third cousins once removed or something, I’ve totally lost count, and he actually spoke to me.” She looked pointedly at Elsa, with a crooked smile, but Elsa did not seem to notice, or perhaps did not get the reference. “We bumped into each other that evening, and we got talking about how everyone always speaks to his older brother, and how everyone talks to my council, and the next thing that I know it’s dawn and we’ve been talking all night.”

“It sounds sweet,” said Elsa, but then her brows drew together. “He did not suggest that you marry…”

“No!” Anna laughed, and smacked Elsa’s knee lightly. “He and his brother were ordered back out of nowhere because of some family business, he didn’t say exactly what it was, but Hans spoke to his brother and managed to get a permanent place in Arendelle. So I got one of the old Ambassador’s quarters in the city done up, and he moved in. And then we were able to spend time together. With a governess, but at least it’s not our nanny. Do you remember her?””

“Perhaps?” said Elsa. She ran a hand through her hair, dislodging fine flakes of ice. “Did she wear white a lot?”

Anna nodded enthusiastically. “Yes! And Our mother used to wear a lot of black! And some purple, because, you know, old trade links with Corona and everything. But she wore a lot of black after her sisters passed away. So yes, white would be Nanny. And you used to freeze her rear end, as well, by the way,” she added.

Elsa laughed sheepishly. “I do not remember that.”

“I didn’t, before that stone.” Anna waved towards the rock wall which Kristoff had used to produce the tunnel exit for them. “But now… it’s weird. There’s little bits that I remember from way before I remember anything else. Like… I’m pretty sure I remember being in the cradle, and you making snowflakes for me.”

Kristoff raised his head and snorted. “Bollocks,” he said.

“Hey! Grand Pabbie said that he took all of the memories out! Maybe that sort of held them in place, or whatever,” said Anna, “until I opened up the stone again. It’s not like I remember any other really old things. Just Elsa’s magic.” Her voice, which had become more agitated, softened again as she looked back to her sister. “And I’m glad I do. I only had half my memories of you, before.”

“Well, now you don’t need memories,” said Hiccup, pointing between them. “You’re back.”

Toothless huffed and wriggled, almost dropping Hiccup to the ground in his attempts to turn round and put his head into Hiccup’s lap.

“Yes, and you’re here too. Like I’m going to expect _you_ to go anywhere.”

 

 

 

 

 

It was at Kristoff’s insistence that they returned into the tunnels for the night, and it was him who decided when they got up and kept walking the next day. In their sleep, Anna and Elsa had managed to turn so that their arms brushed lay beside each other, and Elsa looked on fondly even as Anna pulled a face and grumbled her way through being awoken. It was not until Hiccup threatened to dump water on her head that she actually sat up, and even then it was to swipe at his legs and try to knock him over.

In revenge, Hiccup got Toothless to steal one of Anna’s boots and lollop down the tunnel with it, while she pursued with her shouting echoing down the corridor. Even Elsa finally laughed. Only at the pained look on Kristoff’s face did Hiccup finally relent, and let the dragon give the boot back.

Once again, they kept their conversation light throughout the day, and stepped outside briefly in the middle of the day and as the sun went down. This time, they were notably further north, and if Hiccup had been in possession of one of his journals still he might have been tempted to sketch the view from the high hill on which they sat.

As they stepped inside for the second evening, Hiccup saw Kristoff frowning at the crystal again, and stepped over before the older man could put it away again.

“What is it?” he said, and Kristoff started and whipped round.

“Nothing.”

“What was it you said? Bollocks?” said Hiccup, doing his best give one of those stares in which his father excelled, the ones that looked straight through you and cast a very bright light on whatever you had been trying to shuffle into the shadows.

Kristoff held out for only a few seconds before sighing and rolling his eyes, though he did slip the pendant back over his head at the same time. “ _Fine_. This is using up the crystal pretty quickly. Going with the sled is quicker than walking.”

“You’ll be able to get back to your family all right, though, won’t you?” It was a long way back to the mountains from any direction, and the last thing that Hiccup wanted was for Kristoff to risk once again passing whatever that great white dragon had been.

“Yes, I’ll be fine,” said Kristoff dismissively. “Worst happens, I’ll call them, like I did before.”

“So the magic is sort of stored in those crystals, then,” said Hiccup, standing on his tiptoes in case he could catch one more glimpse of the green stone. Kristoff stepped away, rearranging the front of his tunic. “I mean, you don’t have magic, but you do _use_ it.”

“I’m not like your friend,” said Kristoff, words blunt but tone not unkind. “I won’t know about her magic, all right? I’m just not scared of it.”

“That’s still a good start.”

By the middle of the third day, if Hiccup looked in the right direction he thought that he could just see Gothi’s spire visible between the hills, and the washing away of apprehension he had not even realised was there. He could have hugged Kristoff, if he weren’t quite so sure that it would be severely unappreciated.

Elsa became visibly nervous as they made the final approach, and while Kristoff was opening up the wall one last time – watched with continued interest by Anna – Hiccup pulled her aside.

“It’s going to be all right,” he said.

She was trembling beneath the hand on her shoulder. “Will you – will you fetch me clothes? Before I return?” Her arms were crossed over her chest, Astrid’s cloak not enough to cover beyond her thighs. The ice of her clothes had remained remarkably consistent over the days, even while she slept. It moved like fabric, the skirt folding and shifting when she sat down, the fabric not cracking when she bent or turned. Hiccup had only a faint impression of her clothed in ice before, some sort of armour before the Red Death, but he could not remember if it had been anything like this fine.

“I can if you want, but I don’t think that you really need it. People are just going to be happy that we’re back.”

“That you are back,” she said, with the unerring accuracy that he certainly should have been used to by now.

“Well, they don’t know that I’ve kidnapped the Queen of Arendelle yet,” he said, unable to come up with a good answer and settling for a sarcastic one instead. “Elsa, please. I understand… well, no, I don’t understand, I know that, but I do know that Berk isn’t out to get you or anything. You’ve been with us nearly a year now, and aside from Mildew and some of his cronies grumbling away over their tankards… nobody is afraid, you know?”

Elsa glanced back down the tunnel, into the dim darkness far behind them. “You saw what I did to Arendelle,” she said, turning dark, haunted eyes back on him. She looked up at him from beneath her brows, and her saw the muscle in her jaw as she clenched her teeth. “When I have said I am not safe, do you not understand what I meant?”

For the first instant, he just looked at her blankly, blinking like a fool. Then something struck, low in his chest, and he realised just how wrongly he had been hearing her words, all this time.

He opened his mouth, tried to reply, but no sound would come out. All that he could see was _Elsa_ , slight and pale, the girl he had seen in tears more times than he ever wanted to, who had set a Night Fury free instead of killing it and frozen the wound on his tail. It was almost like a silhouette behind her, the woman whose magic had created a great hall of thorns, had ripped a Red Death hatchling apart; a shadow that was not her, but something that walked in her footsteps.

“You do,” she said softly.

“There’s a difference between dangerous and not safe,” he finally managed to put together. “Toothless is dangerous. You don’t know the damage that he used to do to Berk. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t safe. He sleeps in our house, doesn’t he? I know what he can do – I of all people know what he can do! – but that doesn’t mean that I’m scared of him.”

Later, he could think on this, he told himself. Stop and put his head in his hands and wonder on how long he had been saying the wrong words, answering a question that Elsa was not even asking. For now, he just had to get Elsa back out of the tunnels and into Berk once again, get her and Anna safely home where they could change into fresh clothes and eat something that wasn’t rabbit or foraged greens and mushrooms. Even sleep on an actual bed, although that was something else he was going to have to figure out considering he doubted Anna was going to even consider staying in someone else’s house for a while.

For now, he took Elsa’s hands, and nodded towards the sunlight where Anna and Kristoff stood.

“Please,” he said, and even to his own ears he sounded tired and rough-voiced. “Come home. You have to see how much we wanted you back. No! That’s not – that’s not some reason for you to feel guilty,” he added, as he saw the shine in her eyes. “It’s what family does. They hike up mountains, and occasionally crash down them again. Besides, I think Anna would shackle herself to you if she got any hint that you were about to leave again.”

Instead of the smile he was hoping for, Elsa winced, and Hiccup felt a pang of guilt.

“What I mean is;” he sighed. “What I mean, I guess, is: _please_. I can’t lose you, let alone let you go. You just got your sister back. You – you have a home here, I hope. I really hope. And you have Anna, and I’d like to say that you’ve got Toothless as well, and me.” He didn’t want to say outright that she had so much to lose now, compared to a year ago, but he hoped that she understood all the same. “And there’s always the future. I’ll make things better for you, I promise.”

“You do not have to promise me that.”

“Nope. I’m doing so entirely of my own free will.” Hiccup squeezed her fingers, and Elsa looked as if she was not sure whether to laugh or cry but finally closed her eyes and nodded. “You ready for this?”

“Not at all,” she said, but smiled.

He held her hand until they were out in the sunlight, and Anna stepped over instead. They might have still been a short distance from the village, but it was still close enough to be home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that, folks, is the end of the Frozen Arc! That is only the first half of this fic; we're not there yet. Doubtless people noticed the lack of the 'Let It Go' motifs and Elsa's very clear acceptance of her own powers; well, we're halfway there.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello once more! And welcome to the second half/second arc of this fic, the Academy Arc. We'll mostly be moving beyond _Frozen (2013)_ here, but there's still a few elements left to come, as well as some more elements of Riders and Defenders of Berk, heavily remixed. From here, we also go increasingly off-script into the canon divergence from both canons.
> 
> That Thornado (and Thunderdrums in general) love carrots comes from the game _School of Dragons_ , where Johann always seems to be asking for carrots for him!

Hiccup thought that it was going to be a quiet homecoming until the three long blasts from the horn cut through the air. He groaned and put his hand over his face, wondering who had seen them coming and who had thought that it was a good idea to sound it.

“What was that?” said Anna, stopping short.

“Usually it means that a search is over, because someone’s been found,” said Hiccup. He ran his hand through his rain-wet hair. “In this case, I suspect that it means _I’ve_ been found.”

At least they didn’t use the single, hugely long blast that they used to announce his father’s return, he supposed. Though during Stoick’s chiefdom, he had not particularly bothered with that formality. Hiccup waved for Anna to continue on, and it was no time at all before they started seeing people, waving and hailing them from a distance, but as they drew closer to the centre of the village there were people pointing and talking between themselves, and whether it was over Anna or Elsa, Hiccup could not have said. Anna might have been the newcomer, but Astrid’s cloak was only thigh-length, and it left Elsa’s ice-clad legs visible

“Hiccup!” Stoick elbowed his way through the crowd and swept Hiccup up into a hug. At any other time, he might have been embarrassed that it was in public – not just the massive show of affection, but how utterly dwarfed and fragile he probably looked beside his father – but at least for the first instant he was considerably more concerned with being able to breathe. He put his arms vaguely at his father’s waist in return and let his head rest against Stock’s chest for a moment, but could not feel tired. Not yet.

“’m fine, Dad,” he half-mumbled, half-wheezed.

“We didn’t know how long you’d be out there,” said Stoick. He finally released his tight hold, though it was only so that he could draw back enough to look at Hiccup properly.

“I gave an estimate!” Kristoff protested, behind them.

“Kristoff did all that he could to get us back as quickly as possible,” said Hiccup. “It was my leg, if anything. We really wouldn’t have made it back here without him, Dad, we owe him.”

Stoick looked up, this time giving the others more than a brief glance. He did not seem surprised by Kristoff, spared a look for Elsa’s legs but did not comment, then looked to Anna and actually paled, eyes going wide. “ _Your_ –” he began to say, in Arendellen, and Hiccup was readying to yell when another voice cut through the crowd.

“There it is!” Mildew stabbed down at them with his stick, standing on the terrace above them. The added couple of yards gave him an air of being almost imposing, a word to which Mildew had no right. “Finally, it returns to us after the damage it’s done!”

This time around, Hiccup could not even begin to fathom what Mildew was talking about. He looked at him incredulously.

“Only this time,” Mildew almost leered, “it’s flaunting its magic, to boot.”

The tip of his staff shifted downwards, to leg-height and it became clear that for once his words were not aimed at Toothless, but at Elsa. Pulling out of his father’s hold, Hiccup stood defiantly in front of her, and something in him snapped. He was tired, sore, and sick enough of Mildew’s threats against Toothless without him trying to level barbs against Elsa as well. At another time, he might have been level-headed enough to respond reasonably, but he was feeling less than reasonable just them.

“Come down here and say that, Mildew,” he called in return, the rain giving his voice an odd ring. “Or have you too much fear for it?”

“What, fear of a one-legged boy?” Mildew said. He spat on the ground beside him. “More like I wouldn’t trust you not to bring your dragon to the field. Or your wildling whore.”

“How _dare_ you!” Hiccup shouted, and finally he understood the way that Astrid’s hand would sometimes twitch for an axe that was not there, that rush of anger that made him want to reach for something more than just words. “You… you craven dotard, throwing insults with the weight of the past!” the words spilled from him, dripping with disbelief, as he gestured widely with both hands.

He was dully aware of other protests from behind him, other people. He was not wholly surprised, because this was _Elsa_ , who had harmed no-one and was learning to live like a Berkian and had made no enemies here. Most of them had come round to her as soon as they had seen her fight against the Red Death, magic or no, and she had only made friends, or at least good relationships, since.

“And you?” said Mildew. “What have you to offer? You claim to be a man when it was that creature,” a wave towards Toothless, whose narrowed eyes and pushed-back flaps were enough to make Hiccup almost concerned; “who killed yer dragon for you! If you’re not hiding behind his fire, you’re hiding behind your father’s name. Don’t think I haven’t heard your threats as _the son of the chief_.”

That had not been the meaning of the words, Hiccup wanted to snarl; it had not been hiding behind Stoick, but owning up to his place as chief’s son and the responsibility it held. He ignored the words, though, knowing full-well how this game was played.

“You just can’t keep up with the change in the world,” Hiccup replied. “You haven’t the wits for it. If I challenged you to a match of riddles, you wouldn’t have a chance, let alone a match of axes. Or maybe, just maybe you can’t bear the thought of losing your grip on your past glories, because all that you’ve ever had people praise you for is fighting dragons, and if they take that away then you have _nothing left to you_.”

“Hiccup, that’s enough,” said Stoick.

It cut through what felt like a red haze, vision that had narrowed down to Mildew and nothing more and had not even accounted for the dozens of people around him or the people at Mildew’s back. Not that they necessarily supported Mildew; they may well have just been drawn by the noise, or indeed the sight of a crowd of people. But they were all there to witness it.

He was ready to turn away, leave the insults hanging in the air between them, but it seemed Mildew was not. As Hiccup turned his head away, the old man slammed the butt of his staff against the ground, cracking it against a rock loudly enough to cut through the chatter around them.

“Oh yes, so proud of your wits, aren’t you? Not something that’s known to run in your family. If it isn’t your father making friends with the man who turned traitor, it was your mother refusing to raise a sword to the dragons. I’m sure she’d be so proud of you now, taking up with the same creatures who ate–”

“Mildew!” Stoick bellowed, and Hiccup had no idea how his voice did not shake, because Hiccup’s own throat was too full of horror for words to form.

Mildew sneered down, and perhaps if there had been even a hint of shame in him for his words, Hiccup might have still done as his father had asked. But it was the malice in Mildew’s eyes, the twist of a smile at the corner of his lips, that was too much.

“Hólmganga!” Hiccup snapped.

The groups around them went quiet, so that the spit and scatter of rain on surfaces around them could be heard. Stoick’s face had gone ashen behind the red of his beard, and even Mildew looked shocked. Hiccup glared up, feeling as if his whole body was thrumming with anger, growing hotter and sharper with each person that Mildew had insulted until this, these words to which he had no right, had just become too much.

“Hólmganga, Mildew,” he repeated. “You and me, sword and shield. Unless what wisp of courage you may once have possessed has entirely abandoned you.”

“Wh-what?” Mildew blustered. There was a ring of a laugh to the words, an edge of hysteria. “Would you have us meet at dawn, on the old land?”

“I will give you the full seven days, if that is what you wish,” said Hiccup. “If you have managed to find your sword by then, let alone sharpen it.” He had read too many tales, perhaps, or heard too many stories over night fires, dreamed for too many years to be the sort about whom stories would be told. Even if he did not want that any more, the words had stayed with him.

“ _You do not have to do this_ >,” said Stoick, but what made Hiccup’s head twitch, almost caused him to look around, was that the words were spoken in Arendellen. Only a handful of Berkians would be able to speak Arendellen well enough to understand a sentence like that, instead of the simple words and numbers that they would need for small-scale trade. Mildew certainly would not.

Hiccup could have replied that something at least had to be done, that Mildew was only growing worse, but he said nothing and simply watched. For several moments, Mildew stood breathing heavily, then his eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t dare, boy.”

“You are not a man’s equal,” said Hiccup, raising his voice again with the words of the challenge. There was shouting in the background, and he had to shout the last of the formal words. “And not a man at heart!”

Mildew’s hands clenched and unclenched on the wood of his staff. “I am as much a man as you,” he finally shouted back, to increasing roars from the crowd. Hiccup felt a rush of vindication at the uncertainty that wobbled just beneath the surface of Mildew’s voice.

Then Stoick grabbed Hiccup by the arm, and hauled him unceremoniously away.

 

 

 

 

 

“What were you thinking?” Stoick slammed the door behind them and advanced on Hiccup, pressing him back across the front room of their house. “Of all the absurd, foolish things…”

Behind Stoick, the door was pushed ajar again, and Anna peered through the gap. A second or two later, Astrid pushed the door open fully and stood in the doorway with the others, Kristoff trying to look like he wasn’t part of this despite continuing to linger nearby. Stoick did not seem to notice.

“What, I was supposed to just let him say that?” said Hiccup, with a sweep of his arm. “You heard every word, Dad! First Toothless, then Elsa, then you, then…” anger rose in him like a wave, and he could not even say it, could not acknowledge that Mildew had spoken about his mother. He clenched his fists. “He can’t _say_ that.”

“And you cannot go challenging people to hólmganga!” barked Stoick.

“Uh, what _is_ a hólmganga?” said Anna. Stoick spun round to stare at the group in the doorway.

“It’s a formal duel,” Astrid supplied, when it became clear that Stoick was either too surprised or too angry to explain. “One-on-one, on a seastack that’s been used for the purpose ever since Berk was first settled. But there hasn’t been one since we were _kids_! Hiccup, why–”

“Well, maybe I’d rather not just go for brawling in the streets,” said Hiccup.

“I can’t allow this to go ahead.” Stoick shook his head. “The war council will refuse this.”

“What, because I’m a cripple?” Hiccup waved at his foot, despite his father’s pained look. “Because I’m just a child? Or is it because I’m your _son_?”

Of course he knew that his father only wanted to protect him. But it was one thing to be protective, and another to coddle Hiccup while allowing Mildew to say what he pleased and sow dissent around the village.

“If you think that what he spoke was treasonous, he shall be bought to trial appropriately.”

Hiccup threw his hands in the air as Stoick chose to ignore him completely.

“If not, then he is nothing more than an old fool, speaking old, foolish words.”

“With all due respect, Chief,” said Astrid, with an edge to her voice that could have cut through steel, “If you force Hiccup to withdraw his challenge, I’ll just take it up with Mildew instead. And if you stop me,” she continued, as Stoick turned and went to speak, “then it’ll be Snotlout, and the twins, and Fishlegs, and so help me I won’t stop until someone takes him to task for what he’s done. The hólmganga is still better than he deserves.”

“He speaks against dragons and you suspect – _suspect_ – that he had to do with the difficulties early in winter. Is that not all? And in return for this, well;” Stoick’s brows drew together, and he stepped towards Astrid with his shoulders set in a way that Hiccup would have said was just a little looming; “what exactly are you threatening, Astrid?”

“I don’t threaten. I promise,” said Astrid.

Uneasy silence tightened around them all. It was Stoick who finally looked away from Astrid, to look over Anna and Elsa still in the doorway, Kristoff and Sven further behind them. Anna did not look as if she fully understood, but her jaw was set and Hiccup had no doubt that she would not hesitate to challenge Mildew to hólmganga as well, even if she did not know exactly what it meant.

Stoick looked from Anna, to Elsa, then finally up and past them to Kristoff. Kristoff raised his hands.

“Don’t look at me. I have no clue what’s going on here.”

Hiccup threw his cloak down onto one of the chairs, then peeled off his vest and chucked it in the same direction. “You know what? For once, I’m going to be the one to say this conversation is over. And note that you haven’t even asked me why Queen Anna of Arendelle is currently standing on your doorstep.”

As attempts to change the topic went, it may have been one of Hiccup’s cruder efforts, but at least it had some success. Stoick looked sharply at Anna again; she waved, smiling nervously.

“It is… your Majesty.” Stoick hastily removed his helmet and bowed, making Astrid step out of the way so as not to risk getting headbutted on the way down.

“Yeah, about that,” said Anna. “I was kinda hoping _not_ to get called Queen while I’m here. Um, because it needs a lot more explaining, and because I don’t want Elsa to suddenly have to be, well, the lost princess.”

Stoick stared. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking between Anna and Elsa as if he were comparing two maps, then rubbed his hand over his chin instead. “Good gods,” he muttered.

“Dad, meet Elsa’s sister,” said Hiccup, with a sweep of his arm. “Anna, you know my father.”

“Elsa’s _sister_?”

“Would you like us to fill in the rest, or would you like to argue about Mildew some more?” said Hiccup. “Because it’s been an illuminating few days, to say the least. I think I’d better get you a drink for this one.”

 

 

 

 

 

Gobber did not seem as surprised to get home and find a stranger sitting among the group at the table, although he did ask why there was a reindeer in the woodshed sharing a bag of carrots with Thornado. He heated up some stew, set bowls down in front of everyone except Stoick, and then swapped his hook for his tankard and drained it in one before refilling it and actually joining them at the table. He may not have heard all of it, but he certainly heard enough of the messy, rambling story that Hiccup managed to guide together, calling on the others to say their parts when it became appropriate.

Before the end, Stoick had put his head in his hands for a while, then slumped back in his chair with a look of such complete astonishment that it became clear that he had forgotten that Mildew had ever been the subject of discussion.

“How much of this did _you_ know?” he said, pointing at Kristoff.

Kristoff looked up from using bread to wipe out his second bowl of soup. “Me?”

“Aye,” said Stoick. Hiccup suspected that Kristoff had been picked as the easiest target, but was not going to point that out and draw attention back to himself.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Kristoff pushed the bowl away. “Well, I mean, I knew about the trolls, of course, but secrecy is really important to them so I’ve never told anyone before. Letting Hiccup and Anna into the Valley was a big thing for them, so…” he shifted in the chair almost defensively, with the same uncomfortable look that he had worn whenever Hiccup had asked him to add part of the story. “And I knew that the trolls healed Princess Anna. I mean, after some years, when I saw her and the white streak. It’s pretty distinctive. I’d never even met, um, Elsa, before that day in Arendelle. I didn’t even know there was anyone by that name in Berk.”

“She was with Toothless when you first came for the year, before Thawfest,” said Hiccup. “And since then… well, you’ve met Trader Johann.”

Only once, but it must have made an impression to judge by how Kristoff grimaced.

“Yeah, I think that’s enough to put anyone off traders. Even if I tried to explain that you took a very different approach to people.” Hiccup shrugged.

“All right,” said Stoick, very carefully. He placed the palms of his hands together, fingers splayed. “So you knew about the trolls, but could not speak of them. I suppose that’s rather like what we’ve learnt about dragons this past year. Well,” he turned to Elsa, and his voice softened a little. “Did you… not remember that you were Arendelle’s princess?”

“I do not remember much from Arendelle,” said Elsa. She sounded apologetic, but not guilty, and Hiccup supposed that he could at least hold on to that. “I remember Anna, most.”

Anna squeezed her hand, where they had their fingers twined together on top of the table, and Elsa paused to smile briefly to her.

“And my father… he was just _Sasa_. My mother was _Muuma_. I do not remember other names.”

“King Agnarr and Queen Idunna,” said Stoick respectfully.

Elsa’s breath hitched, but it was impossible for Hiccup to guess whether it would be worse to remember, or to have nothing at all, of the parents she had not even known were dead.

“And you did not even remember Elsa’s magic,” Stoick said to Anna. She shook her head. “Until some days ago. And so none of us had even half the picture.” He rubbed just above his eyebrow, with the look that normally meant a block of ice to the forehead would be appreciated.

It was almost certainly not the appropriate moment to suggest one, though.

“Unfortunately, that also means that I was telling off those friends of yours for the wrong reason,” said Gobber. They were the first words that he had spoken since sitting down, and it caught Hiccup at least by surprise. “They decided to take Mildew to task over his claims that Elsa was the cause of this cold snap. I told them to scram.”

“It might have been Elsa’s magic, but it wasn’t her fault,” said Hiccup. “It’s the actions of the Silver Priests that started all of this. They’re the ones to blame.”

“And if you tell that to everyone, how are they going to react?” said Stoick. “Not least those of us who have just returned from Arendelle.”

“That curfew was a joke.” Astrid had eaten her stew without much attention, mostly out of the habit that Berk encouraged of eating whatever was put in front of you, then pushed the bowl away as soon as it was clean. “The Arendellens might have listened to it, but the Silver Priests couldn’t enforce it if people really fought back. If two puffed-up idiots in coats ordered me into my house, I’d let my axe do the talking.”

“Arendellens aren’t like we are,” said Hiccup.

“Hey!” said Anna.

“Not necessarily in bad ways!” he added quickly. “It’s… good, sometimes. Your kids don’t learn to hold an axe before they can even walk – they don’t _have_ to. I would love if one day, kids in Berk learn to playfight before they learn to really fight. But,” Hiccup pressed on, seeing his father’s uncertainty and realising that he was not ready for those words to be fully examined by other Berkians, “you guys do listen to authority figures kinda readily. Which is only a good thing when you can really _trust_ the authority figure.”

“King Agnarr was a good man,” said Stoick, seeming to shake himself down somewhat. “I only met his father once, King Svein, but they say he never recovered from the deaths of his family.”

“I did mean to ask, Kristoff,” Hiccup said, “do you know how long the Silver Priests have had this much influence?”

Kristoff put up his hands again. “No clue, sorry. I can ask my family if they know, but it’ll take a few days to travel each way, at least.”

“Well, I doubt that they managed anything in the time of Queen Joan,” said Hiccup, thinking of the figure on her horse with her banner flying high and a sword in her hand. “Even if the first temple was built in her lifetime.”

“The first Silver Priest advisor to the throne was in the reign of King Helge, who was Queen Joan’s great-great-nephew,” said Anna. “I mean, I guess they wouldn’t have had that much power straight away, but that is probably where it started…”

And for generations since, they had slowly been growing stronger and stronger. Unfortunate chance, then, that Elsa had the powers that she did, that King Agnarr could only have been more frightened of the Silver Priests knowing what they would do to his daughter if they discovered her.

“That is all very good to know,” said Stoick, “but it does not tell us what we are to do next.”

“Can I put in a vote for a bath, a change of clothes, and talking about this tomorrow once we’ve actually slept in beds rather than on the ground or in tents?” Hiccup shifted to release the foot that he had been sitting on, having kicked off his boot much longer ago in the conversation. “Actually, I have no idea how long you have even been back, sorry, Dad.”

He was almost surprised when his father nodded. “No, you’re right, we made landfall early this morning, and I’ve been trying to settle arguments ever since. We will need to speak with Spitelout and Phlegma of this, though.”

“Tomorrow?” said Hiccup. He tried to tell himself that it wasn’t pleading, but it sounded it, even to his own ears.

It was a relief beyond words when Stoick nodded.

 

 

 

 

 

Hiccup did not know, and frankly did not much want to ask, where Astrid managed to find as many buckets as she did. On the plus side, it meant that each of them only had to do one run to the well and back, and that eight buckets of water between them would be enough for a bath rather than having to do multiple treks.

Once it had been established that the hólmganga was not about to start any minute, Anna became less edgy, and was more than happy to come with them to collect water. That may have had a lot to do with a desire to actually see some of Berk without immediately getting sidelined into an argument, but Hiccup could hardly fault her for that. It was just a matter of making sure that she was watching where she was going on their way to the well, which mostly worked. She only tripped over once, and caught herself before actually falling.

“All right,” said Hiccup, “so, Berk is a lot smaller than Arendelle. That’s the Great Hall,” he pointed with one hand, narrowly avoiding hitting Astrid with that bucket. “The warehouses are mostly down that way; we’re packed to the gunwhales this year, because it turns out that feeding an outrageously large dragon can be a bit of a strain on resources. Who would have thought? That is Gothi’s spire, good way to find the village even if its foggy or night-time or whatever.”

He would have to be sure to introduce Gothi and Kristoff at some point; Kristoff might actually understand her method of communication better than any number of Berkians did. For now, the ice trader had joined Sven and Thornado in the woodshed. The two had eaten, between them, the entire bag of carrots.

“Looks like we’ll have to wait a day or two to show you the Academy, but it’s not that long a walk, and even less of a flight. The docks are all right on the north, just tucked in to the west of that promontory. Oh, and we can show you the cove!” Perhaps not the sinkhole; it was too dank, too haunting. But the cove was pretty in its own right, and had far better memories bound up in it. “We’ll either have to walk or see if we can persuade someone to give us some help.” He gave Astrid what he intended to be a winning smile.

She responded with swinging one of her own buckets at him, though the fact that it missed probably meant that it was teasing. “What, the great Night Fury can’t handle three riders?”

“Well, some of us like to be nice to our dragons. Which, to be fair, I should probably see if Gobber has got anything that’s good for strained dragon muscles.”

“And if you can’t find Gobber at his house or the academy, he’ll probably be at the forge,” put in Astrid. “Which you can’t see from here, but just listen for the crashing and you’ll probably get a good idea.”

“ _The_ crashing? This is Berk you’re talking about.”

“All right, the _loudest_ crashing, then,” she said. “Unless the twins are awake.”

“This place is so…” Anna trailed off, with an amazed look on her face, then was almost knocked over by a sheep that chose that particular moment to tear down the road. She had to slam to a halt to avoid it. “Different.”

They reached the well, set down the buckets, and Astrid didn’t even bother asking before taking over the handle. “Well, it’s certainly no Arendelle,” she said. “You sure that you’re up for time carrying water and dodging sheep droppings?”

“Oh, please,” said Anna, with a roll of her eyes. “It’ll be fun. An adventure! Ooh, maybe we could even go camping!” she grabbed Elsa’s arm; Elsa jumped and turned sharply, but then relaxed into a smile. She was wearing her usual clothes again, though Hiccup could occasionally see glints of ice at her collar or wrists. “Sleep out in a tent, eat food cooked over a fire!”

Though still smiling, Elsa shook her head. “It is not that much fun.”

“Oh… sorry.”

“Do not be.” Elsa patted her sister’s hand. “You mean well. And with a good tent, and good weather, it can be nice.”

Astrid hauled the first load of water back to the top, and Hiccup obligingly held up one of the buckets for her to fill. It felt good to be back to doing normal things, worrying about buckets of water and not strange temples with too much power over kings and queens. They managed the transfer with barely a splash, and Astrid slung the bucket back down again.

“We might have to be careful, with Alvin showing his face again last autumn. But if we head somewhere that the ocean currents aren’t favourable, that’s always an option,” said Hiccup.

“Or the cove, for a start,” Astrid reminded him.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Of course,” said Astrid, putting her shoulders into working the handle, “there isn’t a chance of finding new dragons at the cove.” She gave Hiccup a wolfish grin, and though he almost wanted to own up he did his best to look innocent instead, leaning on the edge of the well. Unsurprisingly, Astrid did not look like she believed it in the slightest. “I swear,” she added, to Anna, “we must have covered half the sea to the west of Berk, looking for new islands and the dragons on them.”

“Hey!” He straightened up. “We haven’t been to _that_ many different islands!”

“Hey, Hiccup, who’s that?”

“Afternoon, Snotlout,” he said, without looking round. “Anna, this is Snotlout, my second-cousin and second–”

“Second-in-command?” even Snotlout sounded disbelieving. “Awesome!”

“Well, I was going to say second-greatest annoyance, but I’ll leave it to Anna to decide which of the two possible sentence endings she finds more likely. Snotlout, this is Anna. She’s… Elsa’s sister.”

“Elsa has a sister?” At the sound of Tuffnut’s voice, Hiccup did look over his shoulder, to check that, as he suspected, every one of the dragon riders had decided to come and see what was going on. “And she’s here?”

“Well, I’m not in Corona!” said Anna. There was only a very slight tremble in her voice, one that would probably not be too obvious if Hiccup had not known her for years. Her accent, though not too strong, was noticeable as well. Probably enough to distract the others.

With impeccable timing, Tuffnut screwed up his face in confusion. “Who’s Corona?”

“It’s – oh, never mind,” Hiccup shook his head. “Yeah, it’s been a crazy few days. You guys will get the full story at the same time as everyone else, when my father and I call a town meeting.” He ignored the way that Snotlout looked uncertain whether he should just laugh or skip straight to the mocking. “Anna, the gentleman pulling the charming face is Tuffnut, his sister is Ruffnut, don’t worry too much about telling them apart. And this is Fishlegs.”

“Don’t tell me, don’t tell me!” said Anna. She pointed at Snotlout, the twins and Fishlegs in turn. “Monstrous Nightmare, Hideous Zippleback… Meatlug?”

“Meatlug the Gronckle. But yeah, not bad,” Hiccup said approvingly. Anna beamed, squeezing Elsa’s arm again, and bouncing where she stood. How she had so much energy after the last few days, Hiccup had no idea. “Now we just need to introduce you properly to the dragons. I think that Kristoff has a head start when it comes to Thornado.”

“Kristoff? Like, the ice guy?” Snotlout’s lip curled.

“Yes, ‘the ice guy’,” said Hiccup. The second load of water made its way to the top, and he hoisted up a bucket to receive it. “He helped us get back from Arendelle. My father is not going to be impressed with how much we owe him in trade just for that, never mind whatever ice he brings here over the summer. Say, Snotlout,” he added on impulse, seeing the gawking going on, “would you mind grabbing a couple of those buckets?”

“Uh, sure,” said Snotlout, not looking away from Anna. Trying to work out how to explain this to Anna was going to be interesting. Then again, she was the only one among them who was actually engaged, so if anyone would actually have a grasp on being able to handle this, it would hopefully be her.

In the meantime, Snotlout was at least willing to carry buckets for them. He’d take it.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: This chapter refers briefly to homophobia on the part of the Silver Priests, and implies some cultural homophobia in Arendelle as a result.
> 
> There are references here to the flashback events from HTTYD2 - I've tweaked the timeline on them. In the movie, you can see Stoick wearing the helmet made from Valka's breastplate, indicating that the flashbacks are after Valka was taken; I've shifted it back and changed the backstory around it a little for reasons that I hope will pay off in the long term.
> 
> The "fuss around Hiccup’s birthday about the woodshed" was from the oneshot that I meant to put between HTCAWOL and this fic (sorry). After breaking the balustrade in the house, Toothless was supposed to move out to the woodshed. But in the ensuing days, they ended up gaining Thornado instead, so _he_ took the woodshed and Toothless stayed inside.

After managing to send his friends away, with promises that they would hear the rest of the story later, Hiccup managed to arrange for the water to be in the bath, for Toothless to use the gentlest lick of his fire on the metal of the tub to heat it, and for everyone to leave Anna and Elsa in some privacy to choose which of them would bathe first.

Exhausted, he gave up, and just sat down right outside the house. He pulled off his boot and sock, relieved to feel fresh air on his foot again, and wiggled his toes before stretching out his legs and leaning back to put his weight on his hands. Sleeping for most of tomorrow was looking like a good plan. The sky above him was the blue of high summer again, only partially clouded now that the short burst of rain had passed, and there was just the right faint breeze to feel pleasant. For Berk, it was a truly impressive attempt at summer, all things considered. Hiccup closed his eyes and let himself feel at least a moment of peace.

He heard Toothless approach and settle down next to him, then scales brushed against his hand and Hiccup smiled. “I know, bud,” he said softly. Toothless huffed, breath warm and damp on the back of Hiccup’s hand.

Footsteps became prominent among the background sounds of Berk, and Hiccup cracked open one eye. When he realised it was his father, he looked up properly and sat up straighter.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Son,” said Stoick. There was a tender edge to his voice, to which Hiccup was still not quite sure how to react. Even more surprising was when Stoick, with a heavy sigh, sat down beside him on the ground.

“Is… everything all right?”

“I… think so,” Stoick said carefully. He adjusted his seat so that he could clasp his hands in his lap, angled slightly towards Hiccup. “Before anything else, I want you to know that I am proud of you for what you’ve done these last days.”

“Proud of me?” Hiccup looked at his father dubiously. Of all the emotions that he could have expected to have prompted, _pride_ was certainly not among them. “Why?” he added, unable to help himself.

Pain flickered in Stoick’s eyes, but it was deep and almost hidden. “You could not have foreseen what happened in Arendelle,” he said. “Seeing Anna and Elsa beside each other, yes, they look alike, but you could not have seen that when you only saw Anna once every three years.”

It still stung, though, and Hiccup had to look away for a moment. Perhaps if he had asked more questions, found out more about Elsa’s childhood, he might have realised that her Anna and the Princess Anna that he had met as a child were one and the same. Perhaps he could have stopped all of this. The storms and the snow and Anna almost dying – _actually_ dying, to hear what Kristoff had said, saved by some magic that he did not fully understand – perhaps it could all have been prevented if Hiccup had only seen sooner what had been so apparent the first moment that they had stood beside each other…

“Hiccup.” Stoick’s hand came to rest on Hiccup’s shoulder, and he jumped and turned with guilt rushing in his chest. “Don’t. There are dozens of Elsas in Arendelle, and dozens of Annas, you know that as well as I do. And even after what Elsa had said, we couldn’t have known that the power of the Silver Priests was as great as that.”

“What was it like, in Arendelle? The curfew, I mean.”

“It was bad, I won’t lie,” said Stoick. Hiccup winced. “When the weather turned, it seemed strange, but you know what Berk can be like. None of us were too concerned. But one of the guards came to me, one who spoke some Northur, and tried to order us back to the ship. We were still arguing when there was this almighty crash from somewhere, I still have no idea what it was–”

“I would imagine that was Elsa destroying part of the city wall,” said Hiccup.

Stoick’s eyebrows rose, but then he nodded and took a deep breath before continuing. “Well, not long after that happened, one of their captains came up, and said – in Arendellen, mark you – that there was a disturbance with a magic-user, and that we needed to be taken inside.”

“Let me guess,” he said dryly, “you didn’t let on that you spoke Arendellen.”

“I may have failed to respond to it,” said Stoick, voice mild. “If they did not recognise me as Chief, or did not know that the Chief of Berk spoke Arendellen, that is their own problem. In any case, the guard talking to me became much calmer, in the way that frightened men do, and suggested that we might want to take shelter in the castle.

“They were quite good about it, I suppose,” he said, but then heaved a sigh. “They gave us hot food, let us bed down in their ballroom, kept the fires roaring. Even kept us apart from Weselton’s men, though from what I gather they had actual rooms, and not one large room all together. Some of the guards were good men, spoke some broken Northur, were able to exchange a few words with us.”

“But?” said Hiccup, suspecting it was coming anyway.

“But they, shall we say, _strongly suggested_ that we should not go out. A suggestion which only got stronger as the days ticked by.”

“Ah.”

“Astrid got your message to us through Sanguina and Outragia, not that I’m at all sure what they said to be allowed out for a short while.” Stoick shook his head. “They had a good laugh about it, whatever it was, so I thought it better not to pry too deeply. But Astrid couldn’t get back in without making them suspicious, so I don’t know what she did with herself.

“We could see through the windows that the weather was getting worse, but we were not told what was happening. At the end, the inside of the windows began to freeze, and the fires were barely able to keep lit.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen some bad blizzards, but it has been many years since I’ve seen that.”

It had been cold even through the burn of fear. What it could have been like locked in the room of a stranger’s castle, he did not much want to think about.

“Then it stopped. We did not know what had happened then, either, but it was not long before there was uproar, servants running to and fro, shouting outside. I tried to offer my help – and yes,” he added, as Hiccup raised an eyebrow, “that was also wanting to find out what was going on – but we were locked into the room in response. All that we could do was watch the sky brighten. The first that we heard was when Astrid entered the room – there was some argument, from what I gathered, but the first she did was fill in what she had seen. That you were all three well, but that you were on the Wings.”

“Did they let you out, then?”

Stoick huffed through his beard. “Not that they much wanted to. They said something about looking for a translator, apparently forgetting that I spoke Arendellen well enough to understand. It was clear enough that they were panicking, though.” He shook his head, twining his fingers together and jiggling his hands. “I overheard what was being said. Arrests. Curfews. I heard shouting outside the gates of the castle, as well. There was a very swift change in their decision, and we were all but ordered to leave. One of the Priests saw us off; I presumed the Queen and the fiancé everyone had spoken about would be together, but if she was with you…”

“Prince Hans was arrested,” said Hiccup. Whatever Stoick had been expecting, that had clearly not been it; his eyes went wide, and his hands fell still as he turned to stare at Hiccup. “Their Trials – you remember Elsa told you there were four Trials? Hers was the Trial of Earth. It turns out the Trial of Fire is being burnt at the stake.”

“Good gods,” breathed Stoick.

It was too cruel a way to die. A way that he could not even imagine. Hiccup had seen what burns could do, seen people who had lost hands or legs or portions of their face, seen people who had lingered for days only to die with their skin still sloughing from their flesh. Even with only faint memories of losing his own foot, there was more than enough of an impression of pain. Hiccup swallowed, having to draw up his breath again before he could continue. “They told Prince Hans to light the pyre. He did not.”

For everything else that could be said of Prince Hans, what he had said to Hiccup when they first met and when he had been faced with Anna freezing and turning blue, he had not lit the pyre when the Silver Priests had told him to.

“Hans… why is that familiar?” Stoick asked. “Did you catch which Kingdom he was from?”

“The Southern Isles. Thirteenth son,” he added, remembering what Anna had said.

A rough, disbelieving laugh broke from Stoick’s lips. “Not the match I would have expected for a Queen.”

Arendelle was southern in many ways, so wildly different from Berk that of course things like that would matter. “It was a love match,” said Hiccup. He’d heard that phrase used of some southern marriages before, the sort of marriages that were more normal than strange on Berk. “Anna decided she wanted to marry him, from what I gather. I guess that it’s hard to say no to the Queen.”

At least where Hans was a prince, albeit the thirteenth of them.

“I… sort of wish that I could help him,” Hiccup added, the words like a confession. He hadn’t intended them until that moment, but as soon as the thought had come to him he had known that it was true. Toothless nosed gently at his hip, and it helped the shaking in his hands. “He didn’t understand what was going on – I mean, really didn’t understand, didn’t know any of it, I suppose – and now the Silver Priests have him.”

He hoped that they didn’t torture, that they didn’t interrogate, but nightmarish ideas flickered in the dark corners of his mind. Even as Hiccup tried to push them back, he caught wisps of them: flame and darkness and chains and the tearing pain of broken bones. Thoughts that he didn’t want to have.

Once again, Stoick placed his hand on Hiccup’s shoulders, a warm comforting touch that seemed to spread out across him from the simple contact. “I know, son,” he said softly. Another sigh, this one heavier than before. “Sometimes a Chief is lucky, and never sees tragedy among his people. I have not been that chief.”

“Dad!” Hiccup turned to face him, reaching up to grab his father’s arm before Stoick could pull completely away. His hand was nowhere near big enough to go round his father’s forearm, let alone strong enough to stop him, but Stoick stilled anyway. “Berk is better than ever, even I know that.”

“The peace with dragons was a good thing,” said Stoick.

There was too much regret in his voice for Hiccup to be able to take, and it weighed like a stone on the centre of his chest. “Which you allowed,” Hiccup said. “And even before that, Berk was strong and building. We weren’t withering away, like some islands did.”

Those stories had been from Gobber, as well. The settlements that had never made it, whose people had been killed or who had starved or whose young and strong had left, leaving the old and the weak behind to die. For every island, every landing, that had succeeded, there were those that had not.

“Thank you.” Stoick’s voice swelled with warmth. “But these years have not always been kind. You know that I became Chief before I expected to, after my father…” he broke off. “Well, you know.”

Not that Stoick spoke about it much; nobody seemed to know the full of what had happened. Only that a meeting of chiefs had been struck by a dragon attack the likes of which had not been seen before or since. The Chiefs of a dozen tribes had been killed that day, including Hiccup’s grandfather; Stoick, with him as his heir, had been the only one to leave the meeting alive. “I know,” said Hiccup quietly.

“Those early years were difficult ones. The dragon attacks were at their worst, their most frequent. I lost many good men and women, to the dragons or to the boats that left.” He shook his head. “And then Alvin turned against us, and sold us out to Weselton.” Anger edged into his voice, but Hiccup did not feel the urge to shrink from it, knowing perfectly well where it was directed. “I did not know that it was him. I ordered him to hold the lines, but instead he sacrificed his ship – his shipmates – to let Weselton through. It took many brave arms to save Berk that day.

“But time passed, and the attacks became fewer. And you were born,” added Stoick, running a thumb over Hiccup’s jawline, “and that did give me hope. There were eight born that year, and six of you saw the next one. More than for some years then. And since, yes, we’ve done well. The peace with the dragons is already doing great things for us, more food in the stores, safer boats on the waves, than we could ever have thought possible. But,” he sighed, and when his hand dropped to Hiccup’s shoulder again it felt heavier than before, “if I could avoid leading my people into a third dark time, I would avoid it.”

“I didn’t mean to do this,” said Hiccup. He could feel pricking in his eyes, a mixture of pain and guilt swirling in his stomach and making him feel as sick as if he were at sea again.

“You did not,” Stoick said firmly. “Those Silver Priests did, and you did right in bringing it into the light. Now all that we can do is proceed as best we can, to do the best for Berk. That’s all a Chief can do.”

It was not fair to leave Arendelle under the Silver Priests’ hold either, but Hiccup knew that Berk had to come first. He knew the people here, knew the streets, the buildings that had managed to survive for long enough to become fixtures. The thought of bringing battle back to them was impossible.

“Dad, I…” the words caught in his throat, and Hiccup turned his head away. “No, it’s nothing.”

“What is it, Hiccup?” Stoick rubbed Hiccup’s shoulder almost tenderly.

He shook his head. “I don’t… no.” Dropping his head into his hands, Hiccup gave a sigh that was almost a groan. “I don’t know what to say right now.”

When Stoick spoke, it was more halting than Hiccup had heard in a long time. “I hope you know… that I don’t want you to lie to me. That I don’t want you to feel you _have_ to lie to me,” he added quickly, as if it were some sort of correction. “If you don’t want to say it, don’t say it, but I hope that you feel you can.”

Hiccup wound his fingers together and put them in his lap, staring down at his one bare foot. In a way, this felt like the strangest place to talk about this, looking down over the village with its comings and goings; he could see people hanging out their laundry, airing out their homes, carrying barrels and going about their daily business again. But then again, perhaps it was the best place in the world to talk about what it meant to be Chief of Berk.

It still took a while for him to be able to put the words together.

“A year ago… you wouldn’t have talked to me about this,” he said finally. “About chiefing. It’s been a lot to get used to.”

Stoick nodded, and Hiccup was relieved to just be allowed to speak.

“Did you,” he swallowed. “Were there times, I mean, when you didn’t want me to be chief?”

The seconds seemed achingly long until his father replied, and Hiccup felt humiliation threatening to rise in him again. It only deepened when Stoick’s hand slipped away from his back, and the air felt just that little bit colder without it.

“Aye,” said Stoick. “Though not because I feared you weren’t fit for chiefing. I feared chiefing wasn’t fit for you, Hiccup,” he said, and gave a tentative smile when Hiccup looked round with wonder flooding his head and his heart pounding in his chest. “Being Chief isn’t easy. To hear my father talk, it never should be – you’re trying to balance the wants and needs of a whole village,” Stoick swept his arm round to encompass the sight before them, “and needless to say, sometimes what people want is the last thing that they need.

“And yes, I did worry. Because I saw how the others treated you, and how much you wanted respect. And being Chief, well, you need that respect, because that’s how you lead. The old way was to earn respect by the sword, but Berk doesn’t do that any more, and in some ways that makes it harder for us. It means that we have to earn respect without the sword.”

“Be brave without swords in our hands,” murmured Hiccup, the words coming to him like ghosts.

Stoick smiled. “Exactly. But I was wrong, I see that now. You needn’t worry, Hiccup. You’re doing well just as you are.”

“Even if I’ve nearly caused a new war with Arendelle?”

“Well, we haven’t come to war yet. And if there’s one thing you’ve shown you can do,” said Stoick, with a nod to Toothless still lying at Hiccup’s side. “It’s find a way to avoid war.”

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, Stoick had to return to his chiefing before too long, although he said that he would make it a priority to deal with the arguments between Mildew and the other dragon riders that had erupted during the days they had been away. Hiccup was left to his own devices, which mostly meant daydreaming and letting his fevered, tired mind cool down after everything that he had seen and said the past days.

He had at least thought to bring his journal outside with him, and spent some time sketching out what he remembered of the huge white dragon from the mountains. The day grew cooler as the sun slipped down the sky again, but it still felt warm after the last days, and Hiccup did not much mind as he tried to remember exactly how the wings had connected to the shoulders, and what the shape of the beast’s tail had been like. Somewhere along the way, Toothless wriggled to put his head in Hiccup’s lap, and allowed Hiccup to lean on him in return.

He was so engrossed that he barely registered the door opening and closing behind him, and did not think anything of it until Anna plopped down on the ground at his side. Her hair, still wet, was once again in twin braids over her shoulders, and her face was pink from scrubbing. She was wearing Viking clothing, a green tunic with elbow-length sleeves and embroidery around the neck which had been coming away and which Elsa had fixed in careful stitches only a couple of moons ago. Even so, she looked as comfortable as Hiccup had ever seen her, leaning back on her hands and watching the clouds drift by.

“Good bath?” said Hiccup.

“Soap was interesting.” She shifted her weight to free one hand and stuck her left little finger in her ear, chasing suds. “Not quite sure what to think of the smell.”

“You get used to it.”

Anna wiped her hand on her skirt, face falling and shoulders sinking. “So… looks like I might be here for a while, huh?”

That had been one of the reasons that he had wanted to talk to his father in the first place. “It’s not that bad,” said Hiccup, trying to tease out a smile again. “The sheep haven’t revolted yet.”

The smile that Anna gave him looked to be wholly for his benefit. “With the dragons? I’m not sure they’d dare.”

“Is Elsa coming?”

“I left her to the bath,” said Anna. She tucked her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, looking instead at the bustling village below. “It’s still warm. She said it was hot enough.”

That did not in the least surprise him. Anything had to be better than the cold water of the Wildlands. “You don’t want to stay and talk to her?”

“I don’t think that, well… I don’t think _she_ wanted to talk to _me_.”

Hiccup could hear that she was trying to keep the tone of her voice light, which meant that it wasn’t exactly going well. He didn’t know how baths were normally treated in Arendelle, although he had a suspicion that in Anna’s case they might have involved maids, but even once Hiccup had been old enough to bathe himself it had been quite usual to have conversations, usually with Gobber, over the side of the tub. “Huh,” he said.

With a faint grimace, Anna shrugged, the movement tight around her knees. “I guess it’s the scars, you know?”

“Scars?” He felt a stab of panic as he turned to face her, startling Toothless off his legs. “What do you mean, scars?”

“On… her arms?” said Anna, gesturing to her left shoulder. “I mean, I saw them when she rolled up her sleeves to check the water. But she pulled them down again when she realised I saw.”

Hiccup winced. “I knew she had scars on her hands. I didn’t realise they were… elsewhere, too.”

“I guess I should be glad,” she said. “Since that means you haven’t seen my sister naked.”

He spluttered, choking on thin air, and Anna finally laughed. She threw back her head and whooped, as Hiccup felt his face grow hot and red and tried to think what could possibly be an appropriate response to that. Had Elsa been here, it probably would have been a good, or at least entertaining, time to regale the story of what had happened while Dagur had been visiting, but he had no intention of telling it without her and even thinking of it just made the embarrassment worse, until he could not help putting his hand over his face while Anna laughed at him still, dying down to giggles. As he recovered himself and looked up, she managed to get back to having a straight face.

“I mean,” she said, as he looked round, “you haven’t, have you?”

He had to look away and she giggled again, shoving his shoulder and unfolding one leg to stretch out on the ground.

“You are terrible,” he managed finally. “And no, I have not.” He did not add that after the Red Death, a portion of Berk might well have done so, to judge by what Snotlout had said. “I… no, I didn’t know.”

“I’ve got quite a good scar on my leg,” said Anna, lifting up her left foot and waggling it around in what Hiccup vaguely recognised as one of the pairs of boots he had tried to give to Elsa. “Fell off a horse when I was ten, right into briars. One of them scratched all the way up, and it got infected a bit. Big white scar, about this,” she measured out several inches between her fingers, “long.”

“My biggest is probably…” Hiccup waved to his left leg. “It’s pretty tidy, though. Looks kind of like a cross with three lines or whatever you’d call it. Then there’s this one;” he pushed up his right sleeve to show a silvery crescent. “Burn, from the forge. Gobber used to say it was impressive I didn’t get more injuries, working around metal and fire. Oh, and this.” He pointed to his chin, where he knew a faint mark was still visible. “That’s, uh, that’s from when I was a baby.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that one,” she said, nodding along. She tucked one of her braids behind her ear. “So, Gobber, he’s…”

“The blacksmith, the man I apprenticed for, and yes, the one who joined us earlier,” Hiccup filled in. “He helps to run the village when my father comes to Arendelle, so he never gets to go himself. Always wants me to draw what I see in the shops there.”

“And he and your father…” Anna trailed off, looking slightly uncomfortable. There was a definite delicacy about her voice, one he recognised far more from Arendelle than from Berk.

Hiccup let it hang in the air for a moment, not quite certain how to respond. “Well, yeah,” he said finally. “Some of the other Chiefs can be a bit… funny, and some of them used to talk to my father about needing another heir, but he’s happy like this. I know that in Arendelle–”

“Oh, no, it’s not like that!” burst out Anna. “I mean,” she pulled a face, “I guess the Silver Priests… it is sort of like that… but I don’t mind, really! I thought it was sort of weird that they were that interested in what anybody did in private, to be honest,” she added, in such an off-hand way that Hiccup had to stifle a snort of laughter. “I just figured, you know, it would be better if I knew.”

“They’re not, uh, demonstrative,” said Hiccup. The image itself was an entertaining one, truth be told, his father dropping his staid and strict behaviour to act anything like a romantic. He might take care over selecting gifts for Gobber, for Snoggletog and for birthdays, but never had Hiccup caught him doing the sort of besotted staring that he had seen young couples indulging in, nor wandering round hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm. “Honestly, just tell my Dad if you find where Gobber’s hidden his poteen this time, and don’t go in Gobber’s outhouse, and you’ll be fine.”

“Gobber’s outhouse?”

“We have two,” he said, pointing vaguely towards the rear of the house. “Just use the one on the left.”

Anna held up both of her hands, looking at them intently, and nodded. Her ring was not on her finger now, but if he looked closely he could see a cord around her neck. “Left. Got it.”

“Sorry about the second-hand clothes,” said Hiccup. The tunic was at least third-hand, but he did not mention that part. “We can look to get you some new ones. Or some material for new ones, if you know how to make them.”

“I’m not that skilled with a needle. Besides, I kinda like it.” She smoothed down her tunic, then rubbed the hem between her fingers. “I used to ask my parents if I could have Elsa’s old clothes, when we were children, and they wouldn’t let me. So I finally get her old clothes.”

“I remember her saying that, actually.” It seemed like a long time ago now. “I did wonder why… the princesses thing does rather explain it.”

“You’ve spent a lot of time with her this year, haven’t you?” said Anna. It was barely a question, and softer than he would have expected after her teasing.

“Yes,” he said, honestly. “Last summer, before she came to the village, I was in the cove most nights. And since then, I guess,” he shrugged, “I guess I like to know where she is.”

“And standing up to that Mildew for her.”

“He’s had that coming a long time.” If he thought too much about the hólmganga, he would probably start to agree with his father that it had been a stupid thing to do. The best that he could do now was try to not feel this exhausted when it actually came, and hope that he and Elsa could persuade Toothless to not intervene.

Anna put her hand over his, where he still held the mostly-finished drawing of the white dragon. “You love her,” she said quietly.

It wasn’t in question. “Of course.”

Eyes shining, Anna blinked rapidly as she nodded and looked away again. “Good. Someone should have, all this time,” she said.

If he had found Elsa earlier, would anything have changed? A wildling child might have been seen as a child, but they might equally have been seen as a wildling. And she would have been less able to speak for herself, less able to protect herself. Then again, Hiccup had only been four when Elsa had found herself in the lands beyond Arendelle. “She’s got you now, as well,” he said.

Anna scoffed.

“No, really. You…” he shook his head. “I can’t describe it, Anna, the way that she looks at you. It’s like you’ve given her something to hope for again.” He did not want to speak of the nights that he had seen Elsa cry, of the mornings that he had woken to find her beneath Toothless’s wing in an attempt to escape nightmares. “You’ve done as much for her in these days as I have in a year.”

“Oh, come on,” she said, tone mocking but with a bitter edge to it. “You fix her ankle, you teach her your language, you bring her into your village where she can have food and shelter and not get herself killed, and somehow you think I’m supposed to have done more than that just by _existing_.”

“To Elsa? Yes, I think so.”

Anna’s expression softened, and her brows drew together until she looked young and wary again. Even blinking did not manage to hold back the tears, but as soon as one touched her cheek she reached up to brush it swiftly away. “Good thing everyone knows you’re all mad in Berk. Otherwise I’d be worried about you.”

“I’ve heard that a lot.” He wished that he had a handkerchief to offer her, but could not exactly go back inside to fetch one. “Don’t worry, you’ll get there in the end.”

Even if there were tears in her eyes, at least Anna laughed at that one.

 

 

 

 

 

“You should have the larger room,” said Hiccup. “There’s two of you, and one of me. It’s simple as that.”

“But it’s your house!” Anna protested. Looking around them, her eyes lit on Toothless, and she pointed at him with defiance in her eyes and a jerk of her chin. “Besides, you have Toothless. So there’s two of you as well.”

After all of the fuss around Hiccup’s birthday about the woodshed, it still hurt to think of not being able to share a room with Toothless. If Toothless could share with Elsa, though, it would be something, and he was already well on his way to making friends with Anna as well. “Well, Toothless can share with you, then. That makes three to one. And if he really wants, we know that he can fit in the smaller room. Mostly, at least.”

Stoick was still working on getting the village back into order again, with Phlegma filling him in on everything that had happened in the passing days. In his stead within the house, Gobber was steadfastly refusing to get involved, sitting at the far end of the table with half a dozen of his hands laid out for maintenance and oiling.

“That’s ridiculous,” said Anna. She looked at Elsa, and squeezed her hand. “We can share, right?”

“I have made room,” Elsa said. She was wearing her good dress, the black wool from Snoggletog, and her hair was twisted and held up with a single wooden stick in a way that she had copied, somewhere along the line, from one of the other women in the village. The ice was gone from her skin, but the pallour remained in her cheeks. “I have moved things; there is room for another bed.”

“We still need to have you a _proper_ bed made,” said Hiccup. Although winter restlessness had resulted in an actual bed, with legs, being made for Elsa, it still had no headboard or no footboard and Hiccup could not call that complete.

“Then just get them both made together,” said Anna, with a wave of her hand. “Or, I mean, we can share for now, right? Or I can sleep on the floor,” she added quickly, as Elsa looked a little less certain. “Or we can alternate!”

“Whoa, whoa, calm down,” he said. He could feel a headache threatening again, the sort of terrible head-clenching one which had been the norm back in the winter. It was not something he wanted to experience again. “Look, this… it really isn’t fair, to ask you to share that small room.”

“You are not asking us, Hiccup,” said Elsa. Her voice was soft, but steady now, and even with shadows beneath her eyes she looked better than she had when they returned. “We are asking you – to allow us.”

“We shared when we were kids,” added Anna. “This would mean a lot to us.”

With a groan, Hiccup put his head in his hands, closing his eyes. The room did not even have a _window_ yet. When it had been his workshop, it had been overflowing, and those items did not take up even half of his actual room now that they had been relocated. It would do as a room for one person, especially where Elsa had little and didn’t seem to want to accumulate much more, but he could hardly imagine putting two people in there. Let alone Anna.

“You’re _Queen_ ,” he said, the last card that he could play. Even he could hear the desperation in his voice. “I can’t put a queen in my old workshop.”

“For as long as I’m in Berk, I’m not a queen,” said Anna, firmly and just a little more sharply than before. Her free hand clenched to a fist, and she set her jaw in a way that he would not dare to point out was just how she looked when her role as Queen overtook her. “I’m just… I’m Elsa’s sister. And your friend.”

“Don’t bother, lad.” Gobber had apparently decided it was time to actually chip in, between sharpening the points of his fork hand. “I know a decision when I hear it. Best you can do is figure out the best way to go along with it.”

“You’re not helping!”

Anna looked triumphant as she sat back in her chair. “So, that’s settled.” She nudged her shoulder against Elsa’s. “I hope you don’t hog the blankets.”

“You can have them all,” offered Elsa, as gently as first snowfall. “The cold never bothered me anyway.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One part Hiccstrid to one part plot.
> 
> It took me about three attempts to get this to post today, so I apologise if I missed any typos or similar.

He could not resist, the next morning, sticking his head through the open door to Elsa and Anna’s room. Elsa was curled small in her sleep, arms tucked closely to her chest, but her expression was peaceful; Anna was sprawled across the bed, her hair a ruffled mess and one arm slung over Elsa’s waist. Even in her sleep, she was smiling. It made Hiccup smile, and brushed away the lingering feelings of nightmares, of ice crashing down over them and anguished screams. However close he was to Elsa, he would never have dared to touch her so casually, even without his father’s grumbling about propriety.

Patting the doorframe, he backed away again, and went about the house as quietly as he could to retrieve a loaf of bread – Kristoff had not carried any, and it still felt like a treat to eat it now – and step outside to sit on the front step and eat it. Not that silence was exactly necessary when Stoick and Gobber seemed to be making a competition of snoring, but he felt that he should try in any case.

Berk was still quiet, the sun not far above the horizon and relatively few souls up and about. The windmill always turned, but likely at least some of the Firesen family would be up to do the earliest cooking, and some of the fishing families preferred the early mornings to start their work.

Hiccup pulled the bread apart piece by piece to eat, offering a couple of bits to Toothless when he sniffed and looked interested. They were both turned down, probably just for not being fish. Even getting stale, as the mill had apparently been too wild to use when the weather had been at its worst, the bread felt like the best breakfast he’d ever had.

His father had said that there would be a full call of the council today, to talk through what had happened. Before that, they would need to decide exactly how much Phlegma and Spitelout were to be told; Spitelout already knew that Elsa was from Arendelle, but Phlegma did not, and neither of them knew that she was the princess long thought kidnapped.

By the time that the bread was finished, movement in the village below was increasing, and then Hiccup grinned as Stormfly took to the skies, Astrid’s familiar silhouette on her back.

“Come on, bud,” he said to Toothless, getting back to his feet. “Let’s go for a fly.”

Toothless’s flaps perked up at the words, and when Hiccup waved him up the stairs he bounded up a little more enthusiastically than Hiccup had hoped. A couple of the shields on the walls rattled in place, and Hiccup winced, but mercifully there was no flicker in the snoring from the back bedroom and no sound at all from the workshop.

He scrawled a note on one of the slates around the room and left it prominently in the middle of the table, now that Anna was also around and able to read on Elsa’s behalf. Toothless was more helpful than useful in holding his wings and tail at good angles for Hiccup to put his saddle and tail on, even if his tongue was lolling out of his mouth in a grin and Hiccup could see the impatiently twitching muscles in his shoulders and back.

“All right, let’s go,” he said, holding the door open. Toothless sprang outside so enthusiastically that he almost fell headfirst down the steps outside, and Hiccup choked on laughter as he closed the door again, hurried after him, and caught hold of his saddle. How he thought he could stop a tonne of dragon, he had no idea, but Toothless at least managed to stop himself and stayed still just long enough for Hiccup to slide into the saddle before leaping into the air.

With Anna, they had flown carefully; neither of them cared for that once they were in the air. Toothless rolled and banked across the sky, dipping down and flitting back and forth as if he was stretching every muscle in his body. Perhaps he was, after so many days on the ground. In response, Hiccup laughed and clung tight to the saddle, leaning into the rolls and arcing his back with the sharp vertical flips. The air stung his cheeks, but it felt so _good_ to fly again, to see the way that Toothless’s wingtips drew trails from the thin clouds and how the sunlight shone on his scales.

There was still some of the manic energy about them both when he spotted Astrid, in a high-level position some way inland. It was the sort of height they usually used when travelling over water, searching for new islands or keeping an eye open for Alvin and his men. With the slightest shift in his body, Hiccup drew them round in that direction, and they covered the distance in moments before pulling to the steadier pace that Astrid was maintaining.

She looked round as they drew close enough to hear the wings of one another’s dragons, and Hiccup caught the frown on her face before it softened to a smile.

“You’re up early,” he called.

She shrugged. “Patrol.”

They had sometimes, jokingly, called their flights over the water patrolling, but he had never thought there was any seriousness to it. The border sentries were the ones to patrol the woods.

“The Silver Priests won’t follow,” he said. “Going through the Wildlands usually takes weeks.”

“Yeah, how _did_ you get back so quickly? Kristoff didn’t explain.” She raised her eyebrows and looked at him pointedly.

Astrid might have seen the tunnels, from Arendelle to the Wings, but with everything that was going on she might not have noticed it making the travel faster. “That,” Hiccup said, with a grin, “is his secret to keep.”

He rolled Toothless through the air, lifting around Astrid as if he were drawing a circle around her in the air. As they dipped below, he shifted Toothless’s tail, and they shot forwards like an arrow, cutting up and spinning to come in front of her instead. With a shout of annoyance, Astrid scrambled to bring Stormfly to a halt in the air, the Nadder paddling at the air with her feet and beating her wings fast to stop them.

“Oh, really?” Her smile turned to a warning. “We’re playing that game?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He caught sight of the tension in her body, and before she could drive Stormfly forwards Hiccup and Toothless were gone again, flipping backwards to drop down through. The air seemed to whine around them, and then they pulled up again and shot back towards Berk. Hiccup spared a glance over his shoulder to be sure that Astrid was following them, pressed low to Stormfly’s back to keep as streamlined as possible, and let his smile soften.

They chased through the air above the village, Hiccup teasing and jinking back and forth enough to let Astrid stay close. Toothless could produce bursts of speed that he had seen in no other dragon alive, but Stormfly had stamina, and was fast for a Nadder anyway. If there was anyone who could catch him in the air, it was Astrid, and as he dodged around Gothi’s spire he was almost unsurprised to come face-to-face with Stormfly and drag Toothless into their own undignified halt.

“Well played,” he said, peering over. For a moment, he thought that Astrid must have been pressed tightly to Stormfly’s body indeed, to be so hard to spot, then he registered the truly empty saddle and his heart lurched in his chest. There was no time for a cry to reach his lips before there was a crunch of rock beside and above him, and then a weight hit the saddle at his back and Toothless whirled through the air with it, tucking his wings and rolling down through the air before levelling out close to the Academy and low down.

Astrid whooped with laughter and slapped Hiccup’s shoulder from behind him. “Knew you’d go around the spire,” she said. “You are _so_ predictable.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hiccup tried to elbow her in return, but she turned his arm aside and pushed just enough to demonstrate that she would have no difficulty pinning him down if she so wished. “Is Stormfly still with us?”

“She can handle herself,” Astrid retorted. If Hiccup were feeling bolder, he might have pointed out that sometimes she took perceived slights against Stormfly rather too personally, but there was an awful lot of his exposed back that she would be able to punch. Besides, he knew that he was the same with Toothless.

He guided them in to land just outside the academy, planning to see just how much of a mess the twins had managed to make in recent days. Or, at least, how little of their usual mess had been cleaned up. Before Toothless had even come to a halt, Astrid was sliding out of the saddle, and Hiccup refused to admit to himself how much of a loss it was to feel her arms slip away from his waist, her warmth away from his back. Instead he dismounted as well, patting Toothless on the shoulder, and scanned the academy on his way down the ramp.

It was not as bad as he had expected. It may have been that the twins simply ran out of breakable material, and the buckets around the edge of the academy were full. That, though, was almost definitely the rain.

“So,” said Astrid, voice softened and drawn out to almost a drawl. “Is this going to be a regular thing with you, then?”

“What, flying around Gothi’s spire? No, don’t think I’ll be trying that again, unfortunately.”

“No.” There was a tug on Hiccup’s hand, and he allowed himself to be turned around to face her. Her hold on his wrist was just tight enough to be uncomfortable, but there was fondness in Astrid’s expression. “Running off and trying to save the day. Being a hero.”

“I wasn’t trying to be a hero!” he protested.

She rolled her eyes, and pulled him closer, so that they were almost chest-to-chest. “No, that you were succeeding at.”

Hiccup opened his mouth to protest, but did not even manage a word before Astrid kissed him, her mouth warm and soft against his. That softness had always surprised him, against her strong eyes and sharp tongue, her rough hands and ready blade. But her lips were always so soft, and it struck him every time, enough to send any rational thoughts spiralling away as her lips moved against his.

She made a sound, a soft sigh that seemed to run straight down his spine, and he felt her other hand reach up and thread through his hair. Uncertain of exactly what he was supposed to do with his own free hand, he settled for slipping it round to her back, just where he could feel the shift of her breathing and the muscles shifting over her ribs as she reached up into him, lips firmer, with the slightest brush of her teeth that sent a thrill to his gut, a surge of something hot and full that seemed to tighten every muscle on his body.

He wanted to hear her make that sound again, and wondered if there were others like it as well, little _soft_ sounds that should have seemed strange to connect with Astrid, but were right when they were coming from her soft lips.

Astrid’s lips parted, and her tongue brushed across Hiccup’s lips; he almost wasn’t sure what to make of it, a warm wet press, but the fact that it was _Astrid_ , her hand in his hair and her breath on his cheek and her other hand now clasping his forearm so that they were pressed wrist to wrist, made it feel wonderful and his knees go weak. He opened up his mouth to her in return, and the second nudge of her tongue met his, sending a jolt down his spine and a tingling all down the backs of his arms as he tried to step in closer, press further against her despite the discomfort of her skirt’s spikes against his thighs.

Instead, Astrid stepped back into him, and even as Hiccup stumbled backwards against the wall behind him she barely broke the kiss on his lips. In the fluttering moment that his eyes were open, he saw a flush in her cheeks and intensity in her eyes, but then he closed them again as she pressed into him, pushing against him even more than leaning her weight, and she released his forearm to grip his shoulder instead, fingers almost clutching-tight.

He caught her by the waist, and this time the sound that he heard – and felt on his lips, where her mouth was still pressed to his, a strange rippling sensation that spun his thoughts – was something fiercer than a whimper but as quiet, just for _him_. The hand on the back of his head was almost a cradle as Astrid guided him back into the kiss, her tongue on his again, against the roof of his mouth, flicking against his lips. He tried to follow, chasing the contours of her mouth, but it was impossible to think as she pressed against him, hips to hips and chest to chest, and he was reminded with a tight gasp that despite the muscles of her shoulders, the firm lines of her arms and the taut press of her thighs against his, there was softness still, not just her lips but the curve of her breasts against his chest. Even the thought made his face grow hot, but there was a thrill beneath it of how they felt against him, with Astrid’s mouth almost hungry against his, the breathless moment when she tilted her head the other way only to pull him in again.

She pressed her hand against his chest, over his heart, and for an absurd instant he was sure that he would feel how it was pounding even through his ribs. Without even thinking, he bought his free hand up between her shoulders, dragging them closer together still until her arm was almost crushed between them and she bit his lower lip, harder than before. It was only half-painful, the other half hot and intense and rushing, and he drew in his breath sharply.

“Make that sound again,” Astrid breathed against his lips, and what remained of his thoughts were gone, lost beneath the scrape of her teeth chased by the brush of her tongue, her fingers making tiny circles on his scalp. He was not even sure if he did give her the noise she wanted. His right hand slipped down on her back, as he forgot exactly what he was supposed to be doing with it, and he almost jumped when his fingers brushed against bare skin. Her lowermost back was almost feverish-warm against his touch, and the low sound in her throat was half a growl with none of its warning.

It took a snuffling, scaly snout against their cheeks to break them apart. Hiccup and Astrid jumped apart as Toothless tried to push his face between theirs; Hiccup spluttered, pushed him away, and dragged his sleeve across his cheek mostly – but only mostly – to get rid of the dragon spit.

“ _What_?” he said. Toothless huffed. “Did you think something was _wrong_?”

Astrid’s mouth was shining, her lips and cheeks flushed, and she burst out laughing as Hiccup glared and Toothless looked on completely unapologetically. Hearing her laugh made him want to smile, however much he wanted to pull her back into the kiss again. He could still feel the ghost of her against him, and he had more than a slight suspicion that if he closed his eyes he would be overwhelmed with what it had been, driving out all sense without needing a word.

“Well, _hero_ ,” said Astrid; from her, at least, it did not sound anything other than gentle jest. “What did you come up here for, anyway?”

“Oh, well,” Hiccup flapped his hands generally towards the academy around them. “Got to make sure the twins haven’t managed to burn the place to the ground.”

“If there’s anyone who can figure out how to burn solid rock, I suppose it would be then.” Astrid folded her arms, cocking her hip as she shifted her weight, and scanned their surroundings as well. “Looks pretty intact. I told Snotlout that if he didn’t get the twins to muck out Barf and Belch’s pen, I’d hold him personally responsible for scrubbing the walls clean.”

“Seriously?”

“I may have suggested licking them clean,” she said idly. “But at least we aren’t up to our elbows in dragon dung, so that’s a start…”

Whatever else could be said about Astrid’s methods of negotiation, she certainly had the knack of getting Snotlout to do what he was supposed to. That was something that Hiccup had not managed yet, although he was getting there with pointing the twins in the right direction before letting them charge off as they always wished to.

Hiccup was still admiring the figure that she cut, confidence on her shoulders again after the uncertainty that he had seen there while they were still in Arendelle, when claws scraped on the stone behind him and he honestly jumped and turned to see Snotlout on his way down the ramp.

“Did someone say dung?”

“I was just asking Hiccup if we were in need of an official dung monitor,” said Astrid, without even sounding surprised. Hiccup would be hard pressed to say whether she honestly was unruffled, or just a lot better than him at hiding it. He still felt like he needed to run his hand across his lips, as if there was some visible mark there, or as if the imprint of her touch would be visible on his clothes. “Know anyone who might volunteer?”

“I might,” said Snotlout smugly. He folded his arms across his chest and grinned, while Hiccup regarded him suspiciously. Behind him, Tuffnut lurched into view and fell over; Ruffnut followed a moment later, laughing, and it was not at all difficult to figure out what had happened there.

“What have you done?” Hiccup said.

“The Chief came to a deal with Mildew,” said Snotlout. “Mildew has to make a public apology for what he was saying, and we have do make it up to him. I volunteered that we work his fields for a day. Dig in some manure.”

“And you meant…” Hiccup trailed off, and turned to Astrid. “You told him about that? That was moons ago!”

“What can I say?” Snotlout shrugged. “I have a good memory.”

“For dung,” said Astrid. She shook her head, but despite everything was looking at least a little bit impressed. “So you were planning to look at his winter field.”

Snotlout beamed.

“That’s actually pretty ingenious,” Hiccup admitted.

“Hey!” said Ruffnut. “It totally _is_ genius!”

“Actually,” said Fishlegs, carefully skirting around the twins with Meatlug at his back. “I think Hiccup means–”

“Don’t bother,” said Hiccup. Some things were beyond fixing. “So, you all came up here to tell me this?”

“Came to get the manure,” Snotlout said. “Hookfang bought a cart. Then we saw Stormfly outside, thought you’d be here as well, and figured we should make sure that you aren’t hugging the walls of the academy or something because you’ve been away for seven whole days.”

“Hey!”

It didn’t help that even Astrid starting laughing when Snotlout came out with that one. Hiccup tried to look annoyed, but had to admit it was one of Snotlout’s better lines, and was still massively relieved that none of the others seemed to have the slightest idea what they had actually almost interrupted.

He wondered whether Toothless had realised the others were coming, or whether that was too complicated a train of thought to apply to the dragon who currently had his head in a bucket on the far side of the academy.

“Oh,” added Fishlegs, “and your father says you’re not to help. It was us who did this,” he looked guilty, “so it’s us who need to fix it.”

Hiccup grimaced. “Besides which, I think my father has other plans for dealing with what _I_ said to Mildew. But thank you, guys. Really.”

“Are you kidding?” said Tuffnut. He finally straightened up, pushing his helmet back into place. “I always wondered what would happen if you put dragon dung in soil.” His eyes went wide, and he turned to Ruffnut. “Do you think that’s how you grow snapdragons?”

Fishlegs frowned, and looked like he was about to correct the twins’ awed expressions, but Hiccup suspected that it would be easier to keep the twins on track if they thought that they would be growing some sort of dragon flowers. “Who knows?” Hiccup said quickly. “Maybe you’ll grow some Snaptrappers instead. I, on the other hand, should probably go and see what my father wants with me today. We were supposed to talk about… a lot of things,” he finished lamely.

The twins and Snotlout didn’t seem to realise, but Fishlegs was giving Hiccup a very intense look, a slight frown on the corners of his mouth. Nothing was said, though, as Hiccup crossed to Toothless, pulled the bucket off his head, and dodged a slobbery lick.

“Yes, thank you,” he said, but scratched Toothless under the chin anyway. He looked over to Astrid, who was shaking her head at Snotlout and the twins. “Uh, I’m not sure whether Anna and Elsa are going to be with me for this,” he lied. “Astrid, would you mind coming back, in case they’re not? I’d rather Anna be around someone she knows, if I’m not here.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she replied, and he could not tell from her voice whether she believed him or whether she knew that he wanted her in this meeting as well. She whistled, and Stormfly called in response from outside. Astrid snorted fondly. “Looks like I’m meeting her outside, then.”

It was good to know that he wasn’t the only one lower on the pecking order than their dragon, at least.

 

 

 

 

 

The day was solidly warm by the time that the time that they returned to Hiccup’s house, and Astrid’s kiss felt almost like a dream, far away and soft compared to what Hiccup knew waited for him instead. He dismounted by the woodshed and looked inside to see that Kristoff was still contentedly asleep there, having spread out a bale of hay and blanket for a bed and with his head on Sven’s side. It was probably a good thing Thornado did not snore, all things considered; Hiccup was not sure that a snoring Thunderdrum would not destroy whatever building it was put in.

“Go on, girl,” said Astrid, with a pat to Stormfly’s side. “Go home and check on the hatchlings.”

Stormfly squawked, butted her head against Astrid’s shoulder, and took off across the village. There was a fond smile on Astrid’s face as she watched the dragon go, then she sighed and turned back to Hiccup.

“So, why am I _actually_ coming with you?”

“You know the full story,” said Hiccup simply. “Well, most of it, at least. Elsa, Anna, the tunnels. Even Spitelout doesn’t know all of that yet. My father and I need to decide how much to tell Spitelout and Phlegma, and how much to tell the whole village. There’s no way that Anna turning up will go unnoticed, or her accent, and you know that the twins and Snotlout aren’t going to keep a secret of anything we tell them.”

“This is going to be about the Silver Priests again, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” There was no way around that. “And it’s big. Maybe Weselton big.”

Maybe bigger, but he kept that thought to himself, not wanting to have to face it yet. They were still caught up in dealing with the dragons; now the Wildlings were being shown to be a lie, and Arendelle and the Silver Priests too. Or maybe just a different truth.

“Are you going to be inviting him?” said Astrid, pointing towards the woodshed with her thumb.

“Sven? Obviously. He saw the whole thing.”

She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, there’s… actually something that he needs to add,” said Hiccup, with a slight wince. There was, now that he thought about it, one part of the story that Astrid had not heard. Although having seen the trolls himself, he would argue that nobody else in Berk needed to know of their existence right now.

Or maybe that was partially the memories of the huge white dragon, hunting them through the blizzard-filled valley. Despite the warm day, even thinking of it was enough to make Hiccup feel cold, and for his heart to beat faster in his chest.

He was startled from his thoughts by a hand on his arm. “Are you all right?” said Astrid, more quietly. She tucked her hair behind her ear, and it was strangely soothing to watch the curl of her fingers.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, despite the dryness of his mouth. “Come on. The others might be awake now.”

Awake might be a polite way to put it, he realised as he entered the room, at least in Anna’s case. Her cheek was propped against her hand, elbow on the table, and her eyes were closed. There had clearly been an attempt to control her hair, at least as far as scraping it back off her face, but it was already falling back over her forehead again, a few hairs even having managed to get stuck to the corner of her mouth. She was wearing the same tunic as the previous day, slightly rumpled.

“Good morning!” said Elsa, as they entered the room and she looked out from the pantry door. Anna jumped awake with a snort. “You are good?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Good to go flying again. I think Toothless appreciated it.”

“How are your hands?” Elsa sniffed at the jar in her hand, then went to set it on the table. The neat label around its neck declared it to be honey.

“Good,” said Hiccup, holding them out, palms-up. “Looks like Kristoff’s stuff did the trick.”

Astrid grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand up to examine it minutely, frowning. “What the…” she looked at the back as if the wounds were going to have reappeared there, then at Hiccup, in bewilderment. “Your hands were cut to ribbons.”

“Traditional remedy that Kristoff knows. I think it makes the skin grow back quicker or something,” he said. Every word true, even if it did not quite mention what was arguably the most important feature of Kristoff’s family. “But yeah. All good.”

Elsa smiled. “I am glad.”

“Did you sleep all right?” said Hiccup. There was a crash from the bedroom, cursing from Gobber, and a groan from Stoick. Anna looked round curiously, but the others ignored it. “You too, Anna. The snoring here probably didn’t help.”

“I slept fine,” said Anna, through a yawn. “Just… wrapped up in all the blankets.”

“There were three snoring last night,” Elsa said mildly. She pushed the honey in front of Anna, then turned back towards the pantry. “Some things do not change,” she added over her shoulder.

“No,” Anna replied. With some effort, she pulled the top off the honey pot, and looked pleasantly surprised when she peered inside. It didn’t stop her from almost knocking it over as she put it back down, though. “You still pile blankets on me. I thought my feet were melting.”

The door to the back bedroom opened, and Stoick emerged, without his scalemail this time. He took in the increasing crowd around the table, blinked, then squared his shoulders. “So, good morning,” he said. “Astrid, you’re joining us for breakfast?”

“I’ve eaten, thanks,” she said. “Hiccup says that there’s a big talk to be had about Arendelle, and the _Silver Priests_.” She spoke the words with a twist of disdain.

“Pretty much,” said Stoick grimly. “Well, you might as well take a seat.” There was a second crash, and more cursing, this time definitely something involving a goat. Stoick closed the bedroom door behind him. “There is an issue with my armour today.”

“Is there porridge?” Hiccup peered in the cauldron, and found it empty. “Even I can manage that.”

“If you wish,” Stoick said. He filled a mug with water from the bucket standing beside the fire, and took a seat at the head of the table. Even without his cloak on his shoulders, the weight of chiefhood was there; Hiccup recognised it, and Anna might have had an idea as well from the way that she sat up straighter in her chair and wiped her hair out of her mouth.

Stoick waited until Astrid had sat down and Elsa returned to the table, and glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Hiccup was close by, before speaking.

“This is in part about the Silver Priests, yes, but it is also about Anna. And about Elsa,” he added, with a nod to her. “What Berk knows is that Elsa was once a wildling, but that Hiccup found her, and has shown us as well that at least _some_ of the wildlings are not what we once thought. Though truth be told, that has been rather secondary to the dragons. But with Anna appearing, people will want to know why she is here, people will not miss that she looks so similar to Elsa, and people will not miss that she has a well-spoken Arendellen accent. Is there anything that I am missing?”

It took Hiccup, hauling over a sack of oats, a moment to realise that he was being addressed. “Huh?” he stuck his head up over the cauldron so that he could see everyone. “Uh, no, I don’t think so. Well, aside from that I told Snotlout and the twins she was Elsa’s sister. So Spitelout probably knows already.”

“I don’t think we could very well keep that from people,” said Stoick. He glanced over at Anna and Elsa, who were as close beside each other as if they had been tied together. “And I doubt that either of you would want to.”

Elsa shook her head, with an almost fearful glance at Anna. Anna’s eyes had defiance in them, challenging Stoick to make her keep her secret.

“Well, that Terror’s out of the trap, so there’s not much point,” said Hiccup. “Anna is clearly Elsa’s sister, and Anna is clearly Arendellen. So, are we admitting that Elsa is Arendellen, or are we saying that Anna was taken in by them?”

They were the only two options which Hiccup could think of, and to judge from Stoick’s sigh and pursed lips they were the only ones occurring to the chief as well. “I think that saying Anna went from wildling to Arendellen would create too many questions,” said Stoick finally. He glanced over at Anna, who did not protest. “Which means that we have to deal with people knowing that you are from Arendelle, and that Elsa is too. Are you ready for that?”

“We will be,” said Elsa. Her voice was soft, but there was no fear there, and she clasped one of Anna’s hands in both of hers. Without the fear that had consumed her for so long, Hiccup realised, or perhaps with it at least greatly lessened, she seemed more still than he had seen her before.

“But I’m not Queen,” said Anna, defiantly. “Not here.”

There was no surprised reaction from Astrid at that; she must have surmised it, from Anna’s appearance or just from the fact that he had said he had known her already.

“How many people have seen Queen Anna?” said Hiccup to his father, then caught himself. “No, Princess Anna, it would have been.”

“Three or four, at most.” Stoick rubbed his chin. “Spitelout and Phlegma among them. That was at least three years ago, though, and with different hair besides. Spitelout and Phlegma I would trust to keep their silence. But I agree that telling everyone the full of what happened would be a recipe for trouble.”

“For a Southern land, Berk quite likes Arendelle,” explained Hiccup, as Anna frowned. There was a bucket of milk sitting in a larger tub of ice beneath the table, and he added it to the oats before heaving the heavy iron cauldron back to the fire. “And Vikings certainly _don’t_ like the idea of being told what to do. If people here get wind of the Silver Priests doing this to Arendelle, they’ll want to sail down there and fight them.”

Anna paled, and Elsa looked worried even if Hiccup was not sure how much of the depths of the words she understood.

“You mean… they’d start a war with Arendelle?” said Anna hoarsely.

“They’d start a war with the Silver Priests,” replied Stoick. His voice was level, calm, hands placed flat on the table in front of him. It was a look more suited to the war council than to their living room. “Where Arendelle would stand… might be rather more your speciality.”

Anna pressed her lips together, and wrapped her free hand over Elsa’s. “I thought that I knew Arendelle,” she said. “But maybe I don’t. Maybe even being Queen meant I was only a figurehead for the Silver Priests.”

“If Berk – if anyone – went to fight the Silver Priests, would Arendelle join them? Or would they defend the Silver Priests?” said Stoick, more bluntly.

Anna pressed her lips together, then shook her head. “I don’t see how they wouldn’t defend the Silver Priests,” she said finally, voice cracking slightly in the middle. Elsa shuffled a little closer to her, and raised Anna’s hand to rest her lips against her knuckles. “I don’t know how long ago the Trials stopped, maybe some of them went on longer than others… but my father wasn’t able to stop them when they sent Elsa away. And he’d been King for years. I’m only Queen Presumptive, I’m not crowned yet.”

“We cannot consider war with both the Silver Priests and Arendelle,” said Stoick. “I don’t know if the Silver Priests could call fighters from the other lands they are in, but I would not want to risk it. And our peace with Arendelle has always been because we are closely-matched, not because one could easily destroy the other.”

“The people of Arendelle aren’t at fault in this anyway!” Hiccup said. He wiped his hands and crossed to stand beside his father, but Stoick did not look up. “Dad, surely it wouldn’t matter if we _could_ de- destroy them!” It was hard to even say the words. “They’re victims of this as well. The Silver Priests have been keeping them under control for years!”

“And they have not turned against them,” said Stoick. One of his hands clenched into fists. “They let them become powerful enough to banish the Crown Princess, and now to arrest the fiancé of the Queen.”

Hiccup could see the anger beneath the surface, and he understood it. It was hard to imagine allowing a group of people to come in from over the sea, with new gods and new rules, and take over your entire land. To control your rulers and keep your people terrified. But at the same time, he had grown up knowing that dragons were wicked just as much as he knew that night followed day, and that had turned out to not be the truth either.

“We can’t turn against the Arendelle of now for what a century of people have done,” he said, putting his hand on his father’s shoulder.

Stoick closed his eyes for a moment, brow furrowing more deeply, and Hiccup saw the tension in his temple.

“In an ideal world,” continued Hiccup carefully, “we would tell the people of Arendelle what has happened, and make them understand what the Silver Priests have done. I cannot think that any group of people would truly want what the Silver Priests have done to them.”

“An announcement would be too fast,” said Anna. “The Silver Priests are… there’s nobody alive in Arendelle who was around before them. Nobody whose _grandparents_ were around before them. And they bought our Gods to us!” she looked at them with pain in her eyes. “The Mothers and Fathers. Even if what the Silver Priests have done is wrong… you can’t tell people that their Gods are.”

“Gods are gods,” Stoick said. Hiccup was nothing but relieved; he had no words for Arendelle’s gods, and did not know what to make of them. “Just because humans have done wrong by them, it need not reflect on the gods themselves.”

“I know that you have different Gods, in Berk,” said Anna. She looked at Elsa, and a question seemed to form on her lips, but she shook her head and must have put it aside. “And I seem to remember Hiccup saying that the Silver Priests tried to bring theirs to you?”

Stoick nodded. “Aye, though it didn’t get any traction they did try. We’ve known our gods a long time, as well. I won’t expect you to leave yours, though,” he added, with enough gentleness to slip away from being purely the chief for a moment. Sounding more like a father. “I know the Temple has Altars, or somesuch, if you need a space here to create one…”

“Thank you,” said Anna, “but no. We didn’t have an altar in the castle. Some people have small ones in their houses, but they aren’t… official?” she wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “That’s probably not the word. The only altars are supposed to be in the Temple. The Priest at the castle just gathered everyone in the Ballroom each evening for prayers at sundown. He said the prayers, I mean. But I know them by heart, by now,” she added, with just a hint in her voice that she felt she had heard them too many times in order to be able to do that.

“Aye, well, that is… not the issue at hand, I suppose,” said Stoick. “The fact remains that Berk cannot – and will not – go to war with Arendelle. And I do not want to tell my people something that will make them want to do so. I have to tell them something, however.” He looked around them all, especially Hiccup.

With a sigh, Hiccup sat down, and rubbed the side of his face with his hand. Balancing Vikings was never the easiest of tasks, and Berk was already on edge with the days of cold. “Then… we don’t tell them how much the Silver Priests have done,” he said. For now, at least. “We keep it concentrated on Elsa. The Silver Priests attacked her, she defended herself, her magic was an… outcropping of that. A side effect.” No, that wasn’t right, Elsa’s magic _was_ how she defended herself. Hiccup sighed. “Now I can’t think of the word either. But it was a matter of self-defence, and not an intentional attack on Arendelle or on Berk.

“We say the Silver Priests are anti-magic,” he continued. “Maybe we suggest that they know something about the wildlings that most of Arendelle does not – but that has to be a suggestion, we have to let people think they’ve worked it out or they’ll ask why we haven’t told them already. Either this year, or early next, I want to go looking for the wildlings,” added Hiccup, looking at his father levelly.

Astrid drew in her breath sharply, and Stoick looked surprised, but Elsa had heard this hope before and simply gave a minute nod. “That’s a dangerous idea, Hiccup,” he said.

“I’m going to be careful. Make sure they don’t think I’m a threat. But I will have Toothless with me,” said Hiccup, “and Elsa has said that she wants to come as well. I’m already working on learning bits of their language. That worked for Elsa, here. People responded better when they knew she spoke Northur.”

Including Stoick, but Hiccup did not voice that part. He still remembered Stoick’s surprise that Elsa had been able to speak their tongue, that Hiccup had taught her words and sentences and helped her put together the language piece by piece. Though Hiccup knew he was nothing like so good a learner as Elsa was, Marulosen grammar was very similar to Arendellen, which was helping.

He did not expect the corner of Stoick’s mouth to twitch, a fraction of a smile. “The idea, Hiccup, not just the act.”

To that, Hiccup did not have much of a response, and he suspected that he was going red as he looked down at the table.

“So in conclusion,” said Astrid, “the people we thought were our allies are being controlled by madmen, the people we thought were enemies might become our allies, and we’re not going to tell anyone that we have the Queen of Arendelle living in Hiccup’s workshop. Is that everything?”

“For now,” said Hiccup, thinking of trolls, but he was nowhere near unleashing that particular piece of information on the village. Astrid rolled her eyes at him.

Stoick nodded. “Aye, for now. You grab your breakfast,” he said to Hiccup, with a pat to the shoulder, “and I’ll see whether Gobber has straightened up the weapons rack and extracted my armour from it.”

He excused himself with a nod and made his way back into the back bedroom, closing the door behind him once again. Elsa looked over to the cauldron as if she were considering getting up and checking on it, but Hiccup waved her back; he could see how Anna was clinging on right now. He got to his feet again instead and tried to remember where he had put his ladle.

“This is pretty different to holding council back home,” said Anna, with a nervous laugh. “Is it usually like that?”

“Your council’s, what... eight, ten people?” said Hiccup. She nodded. “Yeah. You’ll be meeting Spitelout and Phlegma later today – usually it’s them, my father, sometimes Gobber, and I guess sometimes me, nowadays. Spitelout is my father’s first cousin, uh, _siilkupaan_ ,” he clarified in Arendellen. Northur did not distinguish between the mother’s and father’s side, but formal Arendellen, at least, did. “So he’s, I guess, in line after me to be chief if anything happened. Phlegma’s family have been here since the beginning, and she’s basically like the quartermaster for the entire island.” In the harder years, it had been Phlegma’s doing that people have been kept from starvation, to hear his father talk. “And obviously you want to stay on the right side of the blacksmith.”

“I can only imagine,” said Anna.

“But yeah, that’ll be it. They tend to meet at one of the houses, no special place. Then once every other moon or so there’ll be a whole village meeting, which tends to involve a lot of shouting.”

“No weapons allowed, just to be on the safe side,” put in Astrid.

“There’ll probably be one come this new moon. At least there won’t be an argument about allowing you in the village,” Hiccup added with a sigh. “Once they let Toothless in, everything seemed a little bit easier.”

“Well, if you will insist on taming the unholy offspring of lightning and death itself,” said Astrid, a teasing note in her voice, and Hiccup looked up to see that her eyes were fixed squarely on him, “you have to expect people to be a little wary.”

“Unholy what?” said Anna. She looked between them in bewilderment, and Elsa chuckled.

“It’s, oh dear…” Hiccup sighed. “It’s what Berk used to call Night Furies. Well, the Night Fury. Toothless is the only one we know of. He was, well,” he shrugged awkwardly, “pretty much as frightening as dragons got. So if there was going to be a dragon people would protest, it should be him.”

“You should come to the academy this year,” said Astrid. She stuck a finger in the honey that had been abandoned on the table, and proceeded to lick it off her finger. “There’s only three of them we have to control. Even Hiccup and I would be able to manage that by ourselves.”

“We do have the twins to control as well, you know.” He looked for the thick leather gloves, too worn for the smithy, that had been repurposed for moving hot iron by anyone who was not Gobber.

Astrid shrugged. “Barf and Belch can handle that.”

Truth be told, the Zippleback probably did have a better chance than the rest of them. Hiccup could only concede the point, and provide breakfast.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who hasn't seen Gobber 'translating' for Gothi, [this](https://youtu.be/_qRH0oNlUys?t=6m30s) is a fine example of Gobber's... issues with translating. Arvindell's fire is a particular form of the aurora that appears approximately every 10 years.

“Kristoff really let you tell Gobber about the trolls?” said Anna, stepping carefully over one of the rocks that littered the path up to Gothi’s spire.

“I believe his words were more ‘fine, get on with it, just don’t spread it around’,” Hiccup replied. “Anyway, it’s a good thing that I _did_ , because if I _didn’t_ ,” he placed his foot very carefully when it came to one of the patches of grass, “then he wouldn’t have said that he heard about trolls from Gothi, as well as from when he was a child.”

“And we wouldn’t be climbing _this_ ,” Anna said, sounding as if she was not sure whether she was impressed with that turn of events. “Who _is_ this Gothi? Some sort of,” she panted a breath, “weightlifter, I bet. Athletic fanatic. _Nutcase_ ,” she concluded, following Hiccup around another curl of the stone.

He could not help laughing, wondering exactly what mental image Anna was building up of Gothi based on where she lived. Privately, Hiccup suspected that walking up and down the spire had helped to keep her alive for quite so long, but it could have just been _her_. Ahead of him, he saw Gobber’s shoulders shake as he laughed as well, probably having heard just about everything.

“What?” said Anna.

“You’ll see,” he said.

He peered behind Anna to make sure that Elsa was still with them, quiet as she had been the whole way up.

“You do have dragons,” said Anna.

“And by the time we put one on the spire, it would be hard enough to fit any more _humans_ up there,” he replied, all over again. “And I would not fancy putting several tonnes of dragon on the roof, trust me. Besides, climbing the spire is practically a rite of passage around here. Of course, we could have sent you up on the pulley with the cabbages…”

Anna huffed. “Almost tempting, by now.”

“Come on! The rain’s holding off, and you’re keeping the pace down because you’ve got a one-legged – sorry, Gobber, _two_ one-legged people with you.”

He was summarily ignored for that one, and as the silence overtook them again he felt his nervousness creep back about talking to Gothi about the trolls. He had intended to make it a whimsical comment to Gobber, merely saying this time, for once, he had actually found trolls on his travels. Most of Kristoff’s secrets would have been kept. But then Gobber had said that he should tell Gothi, and it had somehow spiralled out from there into all of them climbing up the spire to talk to Gothi about trolls in just about the one place in Berk where privacy was guaranteed.

Finally, they reached the top, and Hiccup reached down a hand to help Anna and Elsa up the last few steep steps before meeting Kristoff’s eye and exchanging a nod. Kristoff was still wearing the tight-lipped half-frown that he had worn all the way from the bottom of the spire, even if he had probably found the climb easiest of all of them.

“Don’t worry,” said Hiccup, stepping back to allow Kristoff and Sven to join the rest of them in the small flat area in front of Gothi’s house. Toothless had looked downright dejected at being left at the bottom of the spire, while Sven was allowed to accompany them, but once Toothless landed there was barely room for anyone else. “We won’t force you to spill your secrets.”

Kristoff took a deep breath. “I’m more interested in what Gothi knows.”

He, at least, knew who Gothi was; she would occasionally come down and choose a portion of the ice for her own devices. However, he had never seen her house, and looked surprised and a little impressed at the sight of it, the door and windows all set low to Gothi’s height and the heavy shutters that framed the windows.

“Whew!” said Anna, wiping her forehead. “Now _that_ is a climb! View’s good, though,” she said, bending over to put her hands on her knees and scanning the horizon.

Even with uneven clouds in the sky, the view was indeed impressive, blue peeking through white and grey to paint uneven blotches of light across the village below. The academy, furthest point of the main village, was just within sight, and the watchpoints on the edge of the wildlands that made the first line of protection.

“Aye,” Stoick said. “It is good. You can see the whole of Berk from here. Keep an eye on everyone.”

Probably not what Anna had meant. After a moment longer, she dropped her eyes to the ground and puffed for breath, and Elsa – only breathing a little quicker than usual, and that perhaps from nerves – put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“I’m good,” said Anna. “It’s fine. Is the air up here kinda thin? It feels thin to me.”

Hiccup relented, even if he couldn’t keep a straight face. “It is, a little,” he said. “If you aren’t used to it, it would be a struggle.”

Nodding, Anna straightened up, and looked around her. Her eyes came to settle on Gothi’s house, and Hiccup watched the slow spread of confusion at the sight of the doors so low that Hiccup would have to bow his head into them, and the fence-sheltered patches of land given over to scrawny herbs.

The door swung open, and Gothi stood in the doorway giving them all a distinctly dubious look. She swept an arm to encompass them all, then scratched a few lines in the ground at her feet.

“Aye,” said Gobber, “we need to talk to you. Not a healing matter, though.”

Stoick cleared his throat and stepped forwards, his posture and voice adding up to something so respectful that it was almost deference. To judge by her frown, Anna did not miss it either. “Gothi, we need to meet somebody. This is Anna, of Arendelle. She is…” he trailed off as Gothi, without looking down, drew more lines in the earth. “Yes,” said Stoick, sounding only a little surprised. “Her sister, in fact.”

“ _That’s_ Gothi?” said Anna finally, leaning over to murmur to Hiccup.

“Berk produces some pretty tough people,” he said.

“Anna,” said Stoick, half-turning, and Anna immediately straightened up and looked attentive. “This is Gothi, our village elder. She is a pillar of wisdom, and a great healer.”

“It’s an honour to meet you,” Anna said, in just the tones that she had used three years ago when her parents had included her in the formal greeting of the Berk visitors.

Gothi cocked an eyebrow at them, then swept the ground flat again with one foot and wrote something out.

“Trolls, actually,” said Gobber.

Gothi took a step sideways and pointed into the door with her staff. That message, at least, needed no translation.

“I’d probably best go first on this one,” said Hiccup, bracing himself. Gothi did not normally allow people into her house, at least so far as he knew, and he could not remember ever having been in before.

He had to duck a few inches to step in, then straightened up once inside and looked around in amazement. The house was full to bursting, not just with a long low table and the large fire with three cauldrons set over it, but hung with painted shields and embroidered rugs, with huge bundles of herbs and other dried plants hanging from the ceiling and shelves of stoppered flasks, each labelled in some script Hiccup could not read, on the wall. Perhaps strangest of all, for Berk, were the numerous books on shelves and tables, several open with thick fabric markers sticking out of them. Chunks of meat and still-feathered birds were in neat rows from the ceiling, and the air was so thick with the scent of smoked meat, herbs and something else altogether that Hiccup’s eyes started to water.

As he paused in the doorway, trying to take it all in, he was whacked on the back of the knees with what felt suspiciously like Gothi’s staff. “All right!” yelped Hiccup, stumbling in and looking for something that might work to sit down on. Or at least an empty patch of floor.

He stepped around an enormous bag of flour and out of the way as Elsa ducked through the door next, looking around in something close to awe but shuffling close to Hiccup as she drew her hands up to her chest defensively.

“This is quite an honour,” he told her in an undertone. The next through the door was Stoick, bent almost double and having to hold his helmet on; he could not even straighten up once until he had taken a few steps further in, away from the loft which extended right over the doorway. Without even being asked, he walked over to the stairs and sat down on them, folding his hands in his lap and watching pensively.

Anna followed, bumping into the flour and catching herself with a sheepish look around, and Kristoff knocked his head on the doorframe on the way through. There was some muffled cursing outside from Gobber, and Sven’s nose briefly appeared in the doorway, only for him to be dragged backwards again. With a snort, he reappeared, horns clattering on the doorframe.

“No, no!” Kristoff protested, stepped forwards and kneeling down to put a hand on Sven’s nose and steer him backwards again. “Stay out there. And don’t eat anything! You don’t have any carrots in the garden, do you?”

The soil around Berk was not good for carrots, apart from a few select slopes. Gothi’s spire was definitely not among them. To judge by the string of oaths, Gobber was heavily involved in removing the reindeer from the doorway again, and he allowed Gothi in first before stumping in and closing the door in Sven’s dejected face. With all of them in the room, it felt so small that they were barely able to move around each other, and Hiccup felt almost as if he should hold his breath for fear of brushing against one of the others.

Gothi gestured to them all, and crossed to take a seat in a chair by the fire.

“That means sit down,” said Gobber.

There was not really anything in the way of seating, Hiccup had to say, that was not going to end with even him having his knees dangerously close to being around his ears. Now he saw why his father went for the stairs. Gobber found a crate on which to sit, and Kristoff simply sat on the floor in a corner where he could see everyone, watching Gothi intently. As Hiccup hesitated, not entirely sure what he should do with himself, Gothi rolled her eyes, used her foot in a practised sweep to wipe clean the shallow tray of sand beside the fire, and made a few sharp strokes.

“And that means stop dithering and sit down,” Gobber put in.

It would only have been dithering, as far as Hiccup was concerned, if he were trying to decide between seats. Trying to identify one in the first place was a trickier beast. Gothi pointed to a table at the back of the room, on which was a large wooden chopping board, a selection of knives spread out on a leather sheet, and several bowls of herbs.

Taking the hint, Hiccup stepped round and carefully moved everything that he could to the back of the table, making room for Anna and Elsa before perching himself on the end.

Gothi looked around them all with a wary eye, and Hiccup fought not to fidget or feel as if he was being judged for something that he wasn’t even aware he’d done. Finally, she looked over at Gobber, who shuffled around on his crate so that he had a better view of the sand on which she wrote.

“I don’t talk about the trolls,” he read out, as she wrote in small tight symbols. “I told Gobber because he had already heard about them, and because that winter was hard and I did not want it to be so that nobody…” he trailed off, and looked up at her with a frown. “You didn’t say that at the time.”

Gothi glared at him, and made an emphatic mark.

“Aye, I know it was ten years ago! Even so!”

“The matter at hand, please, Gobber,” said Stoick, voice already slightly weary.

With a huff, Gobber straightened his helmet, and turned back as Gothi wrote on. “I have only met the trolls once, when I was much yellower.”

Gothi gave Gobber an unimpressed look. When he realised that she had stopped writing, he glanced up to see her expression, then hastily took another look at the writing.

“Younger! Younger. Not like I’ve seen that word in a while,” he added at a mutter. “When I was much younger. I had heard that they lived in the very heart of the mountains, and that they were hard to find but that, just occasionally, they would take a horseradish to live as one of them.”

There was a crack as Gothi clipped Gobber on his remaining ankle.

“Human!”

Shaking her head, Gothi planted the butt of her staff firmly against the floor, and turned to look straight at Kristoff. He looked uncomfortable, but held her gaze, and then finally nodded. “Yes,” he said. “The trolls are… my family. They took me in.”

Gothi nodded, and swept the sand clear with her foot. She continued writing with deft strokes and flicks.

“I had heard that trolls were workers of great magic, and that they had great… powers?” said Gobber carefully. “Powers. I had heard that they could… steal your socks.”

This time, the look that Gothi gave Gobber was practically disappointment. He straightened up, looking pleased with himself until he saw her frown.

“What? That’s what you said last time!”

With a roll of her eyes, Gothi drew a few sharp lines.

“I only said that to get you to shut your… really?” Gobber broke off and looked up at Gothi, who was now smirking to herself. “So it’s not socks?”

Sweeping the sand clean, Gothi wrote out a few more of her symbols, larger than before. Hiccup could see them from across the room, even if he still had no idea what they said.

“They… steal… your…” Gobber read out slowly. “Sideburns?”

Gothi looked at him wearily.

“Secrets?” he guessed. “Seafood?”

“Swords? Shields?” put in Stoick, craning his neck from the stairs to try to look around Gobber.

“Stoick!” Gobber protested.

“Well, I doubt they’re trying to steal _me_.”

Gobber turned in his seat, readying an admonition to judge by the look on his face. Although Hiccup was entirely unsurprised, serious situation or not, by the outburst of bickering, a glance to his left let him see Anna’s bewildered expression. He wished briefly that he knew more about Arendellen politics, but there was so much else going on that he did not think that he had much time right now.

“Sadness,” said Kristoff abruptly, his words cutting through the air like a knife. “That’s what you mean, right? Sadness.”

Wrapping both hands around her staff, Gothi looked at him, gave a smile heavy with that same sadness, and nodded. The room fell quiet, and Kristoff shifted as if he was trying to press further back against the wall.

“The memories,” he said. “I’ve… heard of it being done. To take away something so bad that it would have broken the person.”

Gothi swept her sand clean and wrote in light lines. After a moment’s stumble, Gobber looked down and read it aloud for the room.

“I had heard of the magic that trolls worked with memories, and I looked for them because of that. I wanted to know about their magic, whether it could be learned by humans, and if they could…” Gobber looked up at Gothi sadly. “Could remove some memories from me.”

It struck Hiccup how little he even knew about Gothi. She had always been there, always looking the same age but always as strong as people twice her size, communicating in writing with the people who understood her or, more often, with simple gestures and knowing exactly what people were going to do before even they did. He had no idea how old she was. There was a story that she had come from somewhere other than Berk, but it had only been a whisper around the village and he had never known where it had even started, let alone whether it was true.

“I went with two other Vikings,” read Gobber. “But they did not make it there with me. Before that, we found…”

He looked up from the words. Gothi had paused, and was her right forearm, brows drawn together. After a moment, she turned her arm to show the scar that marked her skin, a puckered white bite still clear to see. The shape of it was distinctive, a larger circle and a smaller but still joined in such a way that made it clear it had been one tooth.

“The Snow Wraith,” Gobber continued, as Gothi started drawing again. “A huge white dragon that came with the snow. It was as fast as the wind, and as unstoppable as the storm. It slew the others without mercy, and I barely escaped with my life, after being buried deep in the snow.”

“You know,” said Hiccup, unable to help himself with the tension in the room pressing down hard on him, “I’m mostly impressed that you can tell the difference between killed and slew, but can’t tell sadness from socks.”

At least it worked; Anna tried and failed to stifle laughter, and even Stoick looked amused. Gothi nodded in agreement. Out of sight of the others, Hiccup gently brushed his fingers over the back of Elsa’s hand, and she gave him a nervous smile before looking to the floor again.

“Anyway,” said Gobber, with a look in Hiccup’s direction which suggested that he had just volunteered himself for boot night duty for the next year, “I found the trolls, and they helped me to find a safe route back out again. Why did you go there?”

“We needed to get to the trolls. There wasn’t enough time to take the safe route, because it’s longer,” said Hiccup.

Gothi drew something in the sand in sharp, fast strokes, and punctuated with a stab of her staff.

“She says you’re a bloody idiot,” said Gobber.

Expecting Gothi to object to that particular turn of phrasing, Hiccup looked back to her. But she was frowning at him, not at Gobber.

“We didn’t have much of a choice,” Hiccup said. “It was the fastest pass to… where we needed to be.”

“The Valley of… what now?” Gobber craned his head to look at Gothi’s writing.

“Valley of Living Rock,” said Kristoff. “That’s what you mean, right?” He waited for Gothi’s nod. “It’s an old name for where the trolls live, but a human name. The sort that gets into fairy tales.”

Gothi sat back, folded her hands, and looked pointedly at Hiccup. It was not exactly difficult to work out what was expected of him next, and with a deep breath he led into the explanation once again. Each time, it was getting easier to know when to hand over from person to person, what to add and to leave out. He had learnt long ago that Gothi was a good listener, and now she watched intently as the story was woven together again, eyes flicking silently from speaker to speaker.

As they drew to a finish, she got to her feet, walked over to Anna, and looked intently into her eyes. Anna drew back in her seat, went to look at Elsa and Hiccup, then yelped as Gothi grabbed her chin in one thin-fingered hand. Hiccup knew from experience that grip was stronger than it looked. Gothi looked intently into Anna’s eyes each in turn, then ran her thumb over Anna’s right eyelid and out to her temple. Her nails raked through Anna’s hair, and Anna shivered but did not try to pull away.

Finally, with a nod, Gothi stepped back. She stepped up onto a box to take one of the books from a shelf beside Stoick, laid it on the table, and carefully leafed through the pages. It was written in runes, but an old script, not like the one that they used on Berk today. The left page was entirely writing, with curling shapes of black and white along the top and bottom of the pages.

The right, though, was one large drawing, of a Viking warrior on a stone plinth that looked very much like the tombs that some eastern tribes built, framed by skeletal trees. A figure of shadows loomed over him, inhuman-shaped and empty-eyed, as blue-tinged swirls erupted from the figure’s mouth. No, Hiccup realised as he looked more closely; the swirls spread from the figure’s forehead, and what he had taken for blue was actually the far rarer purple, only faint but undeniable. It was the same hue as the stone which Grand Pabbie had given to Anna, bluer than anything that even Corona could produce.

Gothi returned to her sand to write again.

“I got this book from Johann,” read Gobber. “It was sold to him by a member of the Royal Household over ten years ago. It was supposed to be destroyed, but a woman named Gerda helped the Queen to smuggle some books to safety before the Silver Priests took them. At least,” he added, looking up, “I’m guessing that refers to the Silver Priests, because it’s actually a word that I don’t much want to say in public.”

Gothi looked unrepentant.

“Anna, did you know a woman named Gerda?” said Stoick.

Anna nodded, pressing her hands tightly together between her knees. “She was one of the maids. I mean, I don’t want to make it sound like she was _only_ one of the maids, but she wasn’t like my mother’s chambermaid or anything. But she…” Anna’s eyes went wide, and she caught hold of Elsa’s arm. “She knew!”

“The magic,” said Elsa, more quietly. “She knew about it, when we were children.”

“So this book is from the Royal Library,” Stoick said. His eyes lingered on Gothi. “I wish I’d known.”

Gothi shrugged, and wrote out a little more.

“I was not sure that it wasn’t fairy tales,” read Gobber.

“Another piece,” Stoick murmured. He ran a hand over his beard, lowering his gaze, and then nodded slowly. “Aye, well. It sounds as if the Royal Family may have had more freedom in the matter until the last years.”

“I would like,” said Gobber, as Gothi hastily scrawled out more. “to speak to the young man about the trolls. I met them only briefly, and would much like to hypnotise them again. Ow!” He grabbed his head where Gothi had slammed her staff. “What? Like to… like to hear about them,” he said, with a wave of his hand. “Hear about them again.”

“That is at Kristoff’s discretion,” said Stoick, holding up a hand peaceably. He looked over at Kristoff, who nodded curtly but did not say anything. “And obviously, Gobber will stay with you to translate.”

Kristoff shook his head. “Don’t worry. I could read most of that.”

“Of course – what?” Gobber looked round in shock.

“It’s what the trolls use.” Kristoff shrugged. “I mean, a simplified version, but pretty much the same. They use it to leave messages for each other.”

Somehow, Gothi’s smirk was the most telling thing of all. Carefully, Hiccup leant back against the wall and pinched the bridge of his nose. It seemed like every time they reopened the conversation, someone came out with one more thing to confuse them.

This was going to take a while to unravel.

“So you know the trolls,” said Kristoff. He pointed to something above the fireplace. “That’s where you got that from, right?”

Hiccup looked round sharply, even if he had no idea what he was looking admit the herbs, amulets, leather pouches and gods only knew what else that hung above Gothi’s fire. A glimmer among them caught his attention, though, and Gothi got to her feet and used the tip of her staff to delicately unhook a pendant from among the clutter. It was a misty white, like mother-of-pearl, a crystal the same shape and size as the ones with which the trolls had strewn themselves. And just like the one that they had given Anna.

Pendant in her hand, Gothi walked over to Elsa, and as she did so the crystal began to pulse with a soft light, like a star glimmering through thin clouds. Elsa looked uncomfortable at the sight of it, but Gothi gave her a reassuring pat on the arm before swinging the pendant round to Anna instead. Although the glow was fainter, there was still a hint of it there, and Anna put her hand to the base of her throat before reaching under her tunic and drawing out the pendant that the trolls had given her. Her ring from Hans was on the same cord, resting against the crystal, but Gothi’s eyes were firmly on the stone as she peered closely, then nodded.

She returned to her calfskin, gave Gobber a poke in the thigh, and resumed writing.

“I was told,” Gobber read, “that it is sensitive to magic. I mean, that’s either magic or molluscs, but in the circumstances I’d imagine it’s magic,” he added, largely in Gothi’s direction. She ignored him. “I don’t use it much, but it does help to identify some herbs, and it warns when Arvindell’s fire is coming. Really?” he looked up, surprise on his face. “That’s how you always knew?”

Gothi added a few more symbols.

“We do _not_ run around like headless chickens every time the aurora shows,” Gobber said, but Gothi just snorted in a way that made very clear her thoughts on that matter.

Trolls, magic and Silver Priests. Hiccup closed his eyes and leant his head back, hoping that somewhere along the line it would all begin to make sense.

 

 

 

 

 

“You really think that we should go ahead with this academy plan?”

“I really don’t see good grounds for cancelling it,” Hiccup replied. He stretched out Toothless’s saddle and tail along the table, checking each piece over in turn. It was always worth checking metal constructions, particularly complicated ones, after winter, and the last few days had not even been the slow ebb and rise of temperatures that Berk usually had. “We’ve spoken to Spitelout and Phlegma, you’ve already said the official piece to the town, and there’s… really nothing that we can do about Arendelle for the time being.”

Stoick sighed, hands stilling on the wooden duck that he was carving, and looked to where Anna and Elsa were sitting side-by-side on the stairs. They were fussing over Elsa’s hands, talking in hushed voices between themselves, but every time that Hiccup looked up there was either a look of concentration or a cautious smile on Elsa’s face, and that was enough.

“Look,” said Stoick. “There are only three of them that you are talking about putting through the academy this year. If you want to spend the time with Elsa and Anna instead, it will not be a problem to put it off until the spring. Or at least another moon.”

“No,” said Hiccup firmly. “I have spoken to their families, and they have agreed with this. And honestly, I would rather try this with the three of them this year than have to face seven of them next. Besides, Speedifist should be no problem, and Clueless is fine as long as you can get him facing in the right direction first thing in the morning. I’ll just… keep Wartihog away from Snotlout.”

Of all the people to idolise, Hiccup had no idea why Wartihog had settled on Snotlout, but there was not much to be done now other than put them at opposite ends of the arena.

“Hiccup,” said Stoick gently.

“I mean, I’ve got Astrid and Fishlegs to help, and… well, Snotlout shouldn’t do any harm, at least,” he continued, checking the seams of the leather on Toothless’s saddle. “If all else fails, I’ll come up with some mission to send the twins on. We’ve got plenty of islands that have already been mapped that they’ll have completely forgotten about.”

“Hiccup.”

“They’re all still considering whether or not they actually _want_ to adopt dragons, of course, but Speedifist certainly seemed keen on it, and I think her parents seemed happy with the idea. Though I suspect that they’d rather a Nadder or Gronckle, something that can fit in a shed, and not a Nightmare that will try to colonise the whole house.”

“Hiccup.”

“But the island that we’re heading out to is mostly Nadders, though we did find a good cove on the west coast with some Gronckles. Let’s be fair, I’m thinking that giving Clueless a Gronckle is probably going to be for the best,” he said, testing the straps that attached the saddle to the stirrups. It felt loose, but that might not have been a matter of the cold. “I mean, we don’t want him going too fast, otherwise he won’t have time to decide where he’s going before he gets there. Who knows, maybe we’ll even be able to find an _old_ Gronckle for him. There have got to be old Gronckles, somewhere.”

“Hiccup,” said Stoick again.

There was a delighted shriek from the stairs, and Hiccup jumped, head whipping round to the source of the noise. Anna, babbling in Arendellen about Elsa having done something, flung her arms around Elsa’s neck. To judge by her expression, even Elsa herself was bemused by that one. Above them, Toothless half-flared his wings and shifted position, shoulders hunching as if he was about to jump down.

“Er, is everything all right over there?” Hiccup said. His father sighed heavily.

“Look!” Finally shifting back to Northur, Anna picked up something from Elsa’s hand and held it up for examination. At first, Hiccup was not entirely sure what it was, then he realised that it was a cube of ice, glistening in the firelight. “I said you could do it,” she added to Elsa, “didn’t I?”

Hiccup hurried over, scrambling partway up the stairs to sit beneath their feet. Anna handed him the cube, and only as it sat in his hands did he realise that it had dots marked on the sides, opaque on clear blue.

“When I said a die, I didn’t mean it quite that literally,” said Anna. “I just meant a cube!”

Laughter burst from Hiccup’s lips as he turned the die over in his hands, noting that the numbers were even on the correct sides opposite each other. It was large for a die, certainly, a good inch and a half to a side, and the sides were cool to the touch, but it did not sting his skin and at least felt balanced.

When he held it up to look through, there was not the slightest flaw or ripple. “This is amazing,” he said. Carefully, he folded it back into Elsa’s hands. “You should keep it. As a sign of success.”

“I did not do so well with the ice ball,” she said, as if it were something to admit. “It was… lumpy.”

“Well, considering the closest I could do would be a snowball, I still think that counts,” he replied. “Let me guess,” he looked at Anna, who was beaming, “you put her up to this, right?”

Anna beamed. “Well, now I remember that when we were kids, Elsa used to be great at controlling her magic! So I figured… we could start small.”

It certainly was small, compared to the fight with the Red Death, and the snow in the arena, not to mention what he had seen the last few days. But it was controlled, and _perfect_ , and the look of cautious joy on Elsa’s face was more magical than the ice itself.

“I think,” said Hiccup, looking from Anna to Elsa, “that it’s marvellous. At this rate, we’ll have you doing the Snoggletog decorations this year.”

“Snoggletog?” Anna frowned.

Hiccup burst out laughing, and even Elsa giggled, as Anna looked between the two of them in confusion. It was Elsa who regained her composure first, and nodded towards the table. “Go, Hiccup. I will explain.”

He patted her knee as he got back to his feet, and trotted down the stairs once again, only for Stoick to catch him by the arm and steer him towards the front door. “Wha–” Hiccup started to protest, but was tugged outside before he could manage even a complete word.

The door closed behind them and Stoick turned to put both hands on Hiccup’s shoulders. He wondered if he was about to be told off for something once again, and froze warily, shrinking back from his father’s looming presence.

“ _Hiccup_ ,” said Stoick, the word heavy. “Believe it or not, I do recognise when you talk more than usual. No,” he added, before Hiccup could come out with a smart comeback, “that is not your cue to interrupt. Something is troubling you about the idea of this academy; now, what is it?”

He should have expected that the words would be coming, but it was still like a pressure on his sternum to hear them spoken aloud. Hiccup looked down at the ground, three boots and a metal foot between the two of them, and tried not to feel as if his father’s hands on his shoulders were pressing the air out of his entire chest.

“Should I let Gobber do this?” he blurted, looking up again. His hair fell into his eyes, but beneath his father’s hands he could not even reach up to push it away. “He’s the one who ran the arena, he’s got a better chance than me of keeping them in line. I mean sure,” he gestured to the left with both hands, “I haven’t been around them much this last year, but,” he gestured to the right, “they’ve still got their whole lives of me being, well…”

There weren’t quite words to encompass everything that he had been.

“A hiccup,” Hiccup finished.

The silence stretched out for several seconds, until Hiccup looked upwards cautiously to see Stoick looking at him almost tenderly. “You probably won’t believe me if I say that I understand,” said Stoick. Hiccup could not help scoffing. “But it wasn’t always easy. I was the chief’s second son, you know that, and it wasn’t until my brother died that I even found myself the heir. And then I became chief… unexpectedly,” said Stoick, using the same word that he always used and with the same tone behind it that made it mean so much more. “So it was hard to step out that first time, and send out those first patrols, or that first attempt to find Dragon Island. I promise that each time, it will get easier. And you’ve got your friends at your back,” he added, with a gesture to the air where Fishlegs and Meatlug were out for an afternoon flight.

“So you’re saying that I… shouldn’t have Gobber there?” Hiccup reached behind him at hip-height, hoping to find Toothless there, but there was no warm press against his hand to ground him. He knew that Toothless was not far away, though, never far away.

Stoick sighed again. “I’m saying that you need to do this for you. And if you _want_  Gobber there to support you, I’m sure that he’ll be willing, although he is still fixing up some things from the freeze. But you don’t _need_ Gobber there. As you say, all you need to do with Clueless is get him facing in the same direction.”

“Yeah,” said Hiccup, with a weak laugh. “It’s Speedifist I’m worried about. She might have enough brains to be trouble.”

“Aye, those two tend to go together.” Stoick’s tone became teasing, and when Hiccup looked up he winked. “Now, do you feel ready to finish checking over that contraption, and making sure that your dragon hasn’t climbed in the fire again?”

It was like he had been handed something for which he had never made space, this belief in him. Trust. Even if it was only three kids, a year younger than him, it was still the next wave of those who were supposed to be soldiers, but might now be dragon riders instead.

“By the way,” said Stoick, as he pushed open the door for Hiccup again. “There’s been some talk of this among the older folk. I think if you asked for volunteers from among the adults to learn at the academy, you’d get some.”

He resolutely did not imagine what it would be like to stand in front of people five, ten, twenty years older than him and tell them in exactly how many ways they had been wrong. “Maybe I’ll leave that one to Gobber,” said Hiccup. “Or some other willing victim.”

Stoick patted him on the back hard enough to make him stumble into the house. “Delegation at its finest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who hasn't seen Frozen, the page described [is the one the King looks at](http://www.caps.media/201/3-frozenbr/full/frozen-disneyscreencaps.com-517.jpg) early in the film, and is just as creepy as it sounds.
> 
> The crystal pendant which senses magic (and Arvindell's fire) is entirely my own creation.
> 
> Speedifist, Wartihog and Clueless appear in the books as minor characters, and in the online game _School of Dragons_. Speedifist is female here because I mistook the online avatar as female, and to even up the genders a little.


	17. Chapter 17

“All right, gang,” said Hiccup, surveying his friends. Anna was still yawning, leaning on Elsa’s shoulder, and Tuffnut may have been asleep in his saddle. “This is how things are going to be for probably the next moon or so. We train in the mornings, and our new potential riders will be joining us at midday for their lessons. You are free to stay and help or to go as you wish – I know that some of your parents need more help than others,” he added; Fishlegs nodded, while Ruffnut yawned hugely and Tuffnut’s helmet slipped over one eye. “And then in the evening it might well just be me and Gobber recapping with the kids. Any questions?”

Astrid shook her head, while the other riders gave him looks that were varying levels of bleary. There were clearly going to be questions coming up later in the day that should have been asked at this point, but for now Hiccup let the matter drop.

“Good. So, Astrid and I have come up here early this morning and set up some greatshields on the open land behind the academy.” They would have done it the night before, and not have been up at the crack of dawn hauling around and setting up shields as shelter, but Berk’s weather had been its usual inconvenient self. Hiccup counted himself lucky that it had at least been dry this morning. “There are also crossbows,” he managed not to wince as the twins perked up, “with bags of paint on them.”

“Is he about to say what I think he’s about to say?” said Ruffnut, in what was probably supposed to be an undertone.

Tuffnut rubbed his hands together gleefully. “I hope so, my sister. I truly hope so.”

Already, this was looking like a less spectacular idea. Hiccup sighed. “Guys, I’m serious. Reports have started coming in of unidentified boats in the waters north of Berk, which means they could be Outcasts. And if they are, they know we have dragons, and they’re not going to miss a chance to fire on us. Today, we are seeing whether you are any good at dodging those hits. There is a large fish on the front of each of the eight shields, which you need to retrieve. Or let the dragon eat,” he added, knowing full well how the dragons tended to be and how hard it had been to get Toothless to not eat the fish already that morning.

“We’ll be running the course one at a time,” said Astrid. “Your goal is to get the fish, and to not get hit.”

“Um, Astrid?” Fishlegs said, raising a hand. He ran his hand over Meatlug’s back. “Gronckles are immune to crossbow bolts outside a certain range. This wouldn’t be representative for Meatlug.”

“Nope,” she said, “but for one thing, you’re still on her back and _not_ immune to crossbow bolts.”

“And for a second, we… may have borrowed one of the standing ballistas and converted that as well,” said Hiccup.

Fishlegs blanched.

“Look, I spent like three days working on it, it still hurts a bit if it hits your head or your elbows, but it’s… barely any worse than bumping into something,” said Hiccup. That had also been an interesting afternoon. “And I modified the controls so it’s harder to use, so I’m afraid that only Astrid and I can work it. It’s a bit more… complex.” What he had actually done was added a couple of entirely unnecessary levers and a few cogs that did nothing at all, but it would hopefully deter any of the others from attempting to hijack it.

Tuffnut slapped a hand over his chest and raised the other skywards with a cry that made everybody jump and look at him in bewilderment. Even Ruffnut looked incredulous. “Why! Why would he keep such a mighty instrument from us, oh gods?”

“I can’t imagine,” Astrid muttered.

“Anyway, it was very kind of my father and of Spitelout to give us this ballista, even if it’s coming to the end of its use anyway. It’s a bit rickety, but it should do for training purposes. Does that answer your question, Fishlegs?”

He smiled hopefully at Fishlegs, who had his brow furrowed and had shuffled so closely to Meatlug that he seemed to be trying to blend into her side. “I wish I’d never asked.”

Anna stuck her hand straight up in the air, bouncing on the tips of her toes and more awake than Hiccup had ever seen her at this time in the morning. She was wearing ever-shorter tunics in her time on Berk and seemed to delight in not having a skirt in which to get tangled. Apparently it made climbing on things a lot easier, although Hiccup had to admit that he did not know.

“Yes?” said Hiccup cautiously.

“Can I have a crossbow?”

There was a moment’s pregnant silence. “You know how to use a crossbow?” said Hiccup finally, a little relieved that this skill had not been in evidence while they had been pretending to be Chief Hamish and Queen Joan.

“Sure,” said Anna, with a shrug. “The guards taught me. I mean, my friends. I was friends with some of the guards. From the castle.”

The other riders knew only the same as the rest of the village: that Anna was from Arendelle, and that she was Elsa’s sister. Even her age had not been specifically mentioned yet, to let the thought ebb further from peoples’ minds. There was not yet a boat from Arendelle, either with news or with any official judgement on the treaty still unsigned; as yet, nobody officially knew that the Queen of Arendelle was missing. It did not make Hiccup feel as if they were being any less painfully obvious about what they had done.

Then again, he was giving the twins crossbows, and he trusted Anna considerably more. “Sure,” said Hiccup, “why not?”

 

 

 

 

 

By the time that midday came around, Toothless and Hookfang were grumbling at each other over the last half a fish while the others nursed new bruises and tried to wipe paint off their various clothes, patches of skin and weapons.

“Well, that went well,” said Hiccup dryly to Astrid. They had thought to bring up a trough of water to clean off afterwards, but had not accounted for Ruffnut promptly dunking her brother into it and splashing most of it on the ground. He and Astrid had opted instead for one of the buckets that had been supposed to be for the dragons, and spare cloths from Hiccup’s saddlebag. Fishlegs had given up completely, and gone home multi-coloured and muttering about a pond.

“Yeah,” she replied, rinsing red paint out of her fringe. “I always wondered what I’d look like as a redhead.”

He tried to wash some paint out of his sleeve, glad that for once it had seemed too warm to wear his vest as well. Hopefully it would hide the worst of the paint stains when he was at the academy. “Well, personally I wasn’t so curious about dyeing this shirt green…” he rinsed again and only succeeded in smearing it more. “But now I may have to.”

“Where did you even _get_ this paint?” Scowling at the sight of another patch of paint on the back of her boot, Astrid stood on one leg to get at it.

“Bucket,” he sighed. “You know, he’s always painting and whatever, when there isn’t the farming work? It didn’t really seem fair to tell him what it was for.”

Anna stuck her head out warily from behind the nearest greatshield. Despite not having a dragon, she had succeeded in getting orange paint streaked across her face from where Fishlegs had panicked and fired at the nearest movement. “Is it safe now?” she said.

“If you’re waiting for safety, Berk is probably the wrong place,” said Hiccup. He gave the green stain one final rinse, and gave up. Wearing a white shirt had probably been his worst idea today, and that was compared to telling the twins about the existence of the ballista.

“Or at least, being around the twins is,” said Astrid. She gave the trough a dark look, which combined with the laughter that Hiccup could still hear meant that the twins were attempting to drown either each other or Snotlout. He didn’t particularly want to turn around and see which.

Clutching a crossbow, Anna inched out from behind the greatshield, then walked over to Hiccup and Astrid without ever taking her eyes off the twins. At least the crossbow was pointed towards the ground when she was handling it.

“Do you guys always get that… competitive?” she said.

“With the twins, it’s not so much competitiveness as an appetite for mayhem,” said Hiccup. Behind him, Snotlout started shouting and coughing, which meant that he had probably been the one being dunked. “But with Astrid, yes.”

“Hey!”

The punch to his shoulder was only a light one, and Hiccup grinned. “And I… guess I just don’t want to let Toothless down,” he added, tone half a confession. He looked over to where Toothless, having given up on the last fish but mostly paint-free, was waiting and trying to lick the outside of his foreleg. “Hey, bud! No, don’t lick that!”

It was unlikely that Bucket was using anything dangerous in his paints, but Hiccup did not fancy taking any risks. He dunked his cloth into water and hurried over, wiping away the paint that he had apparently missed on Tootless’s wrist. Toothless took the opportunity to lick Hiccup’s face instead, and Hiccup did not manage to pull away quickly enough to avoid getting his hair plastered to his temple.

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” he said, trying to wipe it off. “That will be a marvellous look for the next dragon riders.”

He had not admitted to the others, but was quite aware, that he was distracting himself with this particular activity. Flying Toothless through the barrage of paint arrows, or dodging out from behind the greatshield to shoot at the others, had kept him busy and thinking, and the training was really only a side benefit today. His hands were not shaking from the thrill of flight this time.

“At least Elsa should have the academy set up by now,” said Astrid. “But we should probably head back if we want to be ahead of the new recruits.”

“They aren’t recruits,” he said with a sigh, not for the first time. “This is just… replacing the arena. I’m not suddenly going to demand that everyone get on the back of a dragon and act like some sort of… flying cavalry.”

“And are you going to stop them if they _want_ to?” she shot back.

Ignoring the question, he tipped out the last of the water, picked up the bucket, and started towards the arena. “Come on,” he said. “We can get the greatshields and the trough later. Snotlout! Ruff! Tuff! Get back to the academy if you want to help out, or head home!”

Snotlout took advantage of the distraction to break free of the twins’ grip, and took off towards the academy. “Hookfang!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Hook _fang_!”

Hookfang gulped down the remains of the salmon and scuttled off after his rider, apparently unaware of his own size as a lash of his tail knocked over one of the greatshields with a resounding boom.

“We could always make the newcomers tidy up,” Astrid suggested.

“You want to let Clueless near a ballista full of paint?”

“Point.”

The sun and the wind between them were enough to make sure that he was mostly dry by the time that he reached the academy, and he ruffled his hair to make the Night Fury spit in it somewhat less obvious. Mercifully, Astrid’s caution had paid off, and only Elsa, Smokey, and Silversnap and Skyfire were waiting for them. The academy looked smarter, swept and scrubbed where the inevitable burn marks had originated from the twins, the last of Stormfly’s spines removed from nooks and crannies.

The stretches of blank wall between the pens had been painted with different types of dragons than the ones of the riders; Bucket had been cautious about helping Hiccup at first, then warmed to the idea as he got more involved in the painting itself. Some of the dragons looked rather more kindly than Hiccup remembered them, particularly the Whispering Death whose three-quarter shot to show both eyes and teeth rather minimised the effect of seeing the mouth in all its terrible swirling horror, but perhaps that was for the better to not scare the kids straight away.

 _Kids_. It felt almost absurd to think that when they were only a year younger than him, Wartihog only half a year younger than the twins. But they would have been facing the arena this summer if the arena still existed in its old form, and they would be the first ones – he hoped – to never have to fight dragons. They had not been on Dragon Island, and he hoped that they would never see anything like it.

“Hiccup? What is it?”

Astrid’s words jarred him from his thoughts, and he looked quickly away from the sketchy Red Death that made up one of the murals. The painting did not do justice to the creature, but it retained some of its menace still, however Bucket had made that out of Hiccup’s words.

“I’m fine,” he said quickly. She looked unconvinced, but with a couple of deep breaths he did feel steady again, and he looked over to where Elsa was kneeling with Skyfire and Silversnap, rolling them onto the backs on the ground and rubbing their stomachs. “And those two are on dragon nip, it seems.”

Anna almost skipped over to her sister, and Elsa’s face lit up all over again as Anna dropped to the ground beside her and gave her a one-armed hug. Silversnap rolled over and bumped against Anna’s knee with a grunt, looking annoyed until Anna joined in their game.

“This one is Silversnap, right?”

“Yes,” said Elsa.

“They’re so _cute_!” Anna enthused. She had been smitten with them the moment that she had met them, even when Astrid had said that all of the hatchlings had been even cuter when they were first hatched and less liable to fly around getting into trouble. “Aren’t you?” Silversnap batted at her hands, and she batted back. “Aren’t you just?”

“They’re representing Gronckles today, while Meatlug is helping prepare the winter fields.” Apparently she came in very useful whenever fields had to be ploughed. “Haven’t got the thick hides yet, but otherwise even the real babies look pretty much like miniature adults. So that helps. Though I was hoping to save the dragon nip for later,” he added to Elsa, making sure that it sounded more teasing than annoyed.

She blushed all the same, pushing back a stray lock of hair. “There was a spine in the metal,” she said, pointing to the ceiling. “I used the stairs to collect it. When I got back…” a look down at the chuffing, squirming hatchlings said it all.

“You, me and the pantry,” said Anna, and Elsa giggled.

“Come on, then,” Hiccup said. As relaxing as it could be to watch the young dragons like this, it was not going to be much help for the kids if they were distracted by wiggling Gronckle legs. He scooped up Skyfire and turned her the right way over again. They were getting harder to carry now, not just because of the wings that batted furiously against his chest and made his eyes water with moving air, but because they were getting much heavier even as they grew. “Yes, I know, I know.”

He deposited Skyfire on one of the tables, rubbing her head until her wings stilled and she looked less like she was going to dive straight back off again. Turning, he was just in time to see Anna attempt to lift Silversnap and get caught out by the weight, then brace herself and manage to roll the Gronckle up into her arms like a bundle of firewood. It was less than elegant, and Silversnap looked more than a little confused about the situation, but Anna’s expression was one of unwavering determination.

“Are you all right there?” Astrid cocked her head.

“I’m good,” said Anna, even if her voice sounded a little strained. She half-dropped Silversnap onto the table beside Skyfire, but Gronckles did seem to be remarkably good at rocking upright and within a moment the two dragons were huddled together and rubbing their heads against each other, still chuffing. Anna dusted off her hands, looking triumphant. “There! Ready!”

“Just about,” said Hiccup.

He knew that there was absolutely no reason for him to be as scared as this. His palms were sweating, his heart beating faster and his breathing just a little shallowed. The familiar dull burr of fear prickled down his arms and pricked sharply against the balls of his feet. Even the one that was not there any more.

Astrid leant back against the wall, drawing her axe and inspecting the edge of it. “Now we just need to wait for–”

Hookfang, fully aflame, burst into the academy and roared to the sky. As the sound blasted around them, Hiccup cringed and slapped his hands over his ears, then straightened up. “Snotlout!” he shouted, before Hookfang could roar again. “Cut that out!”

“Then tell those lunatics to cut it out!” said Snotlout, pointing back out the entrance of the academy.

It was easy to tell who he meant, but nigh impossible to know what exactly the twins had done this time, beyond existing, to be so infuriating. Snotlout slid off Hookfang and staggered away, brushing cinders off his boots.

“Guys,” said Hiccup. “We have got three people starting at this academy today, and I would prefer it if we could look something like adults instead of a bunch of morons!”

Before he could help it, his voice had risen, and the twins slunk guiltily into the arena from behind Hookfang.

“Woah,” said Tuffnut, cutting through the pregnant silence. “What happened to Hiccup?”

“He’s acting like he’s in charge,” said Ruffnut, with a curl of her lip.

Unfortunately, Hiccup suspected that he actually was supposed to be in charge here, which he was not sure boded well for the new arrivals. He settled for folding his arms and looking at them as sternly as he could. It was probably a good thing that he did not have to hold the expression for long, as voices just outside the academy drew everyone’s attention, and Snotlout waved Hookfang out of the way just in time for Gobber to appear at the doorway with Speedifist, Clueless and Wartihog right behind him.

“Here you go!” said Gobber. “Welcome to Berk Dragon Training Academy. This’ll be your home for the next moon or so of afternoons. Except for the one after tomorrow, of course,” he added.

Clueless scrunched up his face, the usual cue that he was trying to think of something. “Why not then?” he said finally.

“Because of the hólmganga,” said Speedifist, in a scathing tone that almost certainly went straight over Clueless’s head. “It’s at the sunrise after tomorrow.”

“Well,” said Hiccup, recovering his tongue, “it’s nice to know that someone’s keeping up with current affairs. Yes, the academy will not be meeting the day after tomorrow, in case the… hólmganga goes on for longer than usual.”

Or if Hiccup managed to get himself injured, but he was resolutely not thinking about that possibility. It was _Mildew_ he was to face, not someone of whom he was actually fearful, or had any reason to be fearful. More likely Mildew would try to make one of his sheep his second and forget that Hiccup was no longer the boy on crutches.

“This time last year,” said Hiccup, as Gobber gave a nod and quietly left the newcomers to their introduction, “you would have been coming here to learn how to fight and kill dragons. But things have changed,” he said, with a wave of his hand that encompassed not just the dragons and their riders, but the academy with its open doors, its paintings, and the armoury that now stood empty. “And they’re still changing. So instead of what we used to do, I’m going to _invite_ you,” he said carefully, “to join us here this summer, to keep learning about dragons and the amazing things that they are and can do.”

He paused, both for breath and in case there was actually going to be some reaction. Speedifist looked interested, but Clueless’s expression had not really changed and Wartihog was occupied with having a good exploration of the contents of his nose.

Hiccup gave up and pressed on. “Today we’ll be looking at the different types of dragon which are most common on the islands in this part of the archipelago, what they have in common, and what makes each of them unique. You’ll be working with the dragon riders – except the Chief, naturally, as he’s busy, although I will see if he can bring Thornado down here because it would be good for you all to see a Thunderdrum.

“Now,” he said, stepping aside slightly more to break up his speech than for any practical reason. “You know most of us. Astrid, Snotlout, Ruffnut, Tuffnut.” He pointed to each of them in turn. “Fishlegs will hopefully be joining us on some days as well. You should all know Elsa by now,” he added, with a gesture in her direction. “She’s not a dragon rider as such, but she does know a lot about them, and she helped me to meet Toothless in the first place. And you may have seen Anna around.”

Anna waved, sidling out from beside Elsa to stand more clearly in view.

“She will be…” he took a deep breath, “joining you as part of the academy this year.”

It was brave, nobody could argue that. For all that she could use a crossbow and spar with a sword, Anna had never seen a dragon before Toothless. Hiccup had impressed upon her that wild dragons were far less predictable, that he could not guarantee anybody’s safety, and that it might be very important for her to do exactly what he said if things went wrong. She had still wanted to come.

“Hi!” said Anna.

“Anna, this is Wartihog,” he said, starting from the left, “Clueless,” who was gawking at Anna with his mouth open, “and Speedifist. They’re a couple of years younger than you,” he added, more as a warning for the kids than for Anna herself not to think her an easy target because of her Arendellen accent and almost permanent smile, “but they know the ropes around Berk. If you have any questions during this time, make sure that you ask them. Better to know than to wonder… especially when dragons are involved.”

To Hiccup’s surprise, Wartihog’s hand shot into the air.

“Yes?”

“Where’s the outhouse?”

Not exactly the question that he had been hoping for, but he supposed that it had still been better to ask. “Plenty of trees outside the arena,” said Hiccup.

Well, on the bright side that was his first question of the day dealt with. If everything were that easy, Hiccup supposed, he might actually be able to do this.

 

 

 

 

 

By the time that Stoick came home, Hiccup was sitting under the table with a block of ice on his head and his eyes closed. He ignored the opening and closing of the door, but recognised his father’s footsteps and cracked open one eye just as his father crouched down next to the table.

“Long day?” said Stoick. In fairness, he almost didn’t sound amused.

“That wasn’t an afternoon, right?” Hiccup said. “That was… five or six days. Three at the very least.”

With a grunt, Stoick sat completely on the floor. “Sorry, but it was.”

Hiccup groaned. “How did Gobber _handle_ that? How did he handle that _and_ edged weapons?”

“Years of practice,” said Stoick, in what was probably supposed to be reassuring way. Unfortunately, Hiccup was simply struck with the idea of years of having to handle days like the one that was not yet over, and shuddered. “You have to consider that they don’t know what they’re doing either. The first year of anything is always the hardest.”

“I’m regretting this,” he mumbled.

Stoick patted Hiccup’s ankle, the only part within range. “You’re doing well,” he said.

It didn’t feel like it. Hiccup had done his best not to raise his voice or to lose his temper, but dealing with kids that were a year younger, as well as the twins, Snotlout and even Astrid when she had snarled at Speedifist’s snide comments about the paint on the riders’ clothes… had not made for the best day of the year.

“Now,” said Stoick, voice growing more serious. Hiccup took the ice off his forehead and looked over warily. “Are you going to come out and pick up those weapons again?”

At least Stoick had not phrased it as asking whether Hiccup had _wanted_ to train, because the answer to that would have been at least negative and quite possibly profane. With a groan, Hiccup crawled out from under the table, chucked the remains of his ice into a bucket, and wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

He could not take a seax to the hólmganga. Nor the Gronckle iron knife, which Hiccup would honestly have preferred. No, hólmganga demanded a shield and either an axe or a longsword according to Mildew’s choice. Apparently he had generally used an axe when he was younger, not having enough to afford a sword, and Stoick had immediately set to putting an axe in Hiccup’s hand instead of a sword and dragging him back to training again. Mildew was probably not going to be the one to benefit more from the seven days that Hiccup had allowed.

“Although, Gobber did send something for you,” said Stoick. Hiccup looked at him suspiciously, and he nodded to the table. “Behind you.”

Not sure what he was going to find, Hiccup turned to see an axe lying on the table, the handle smooth and a little shorter than would usually be made. The edge shone, clearly freshly-sharpened.

“He was intending to finish this for Snoggletog, done up nicely,” Stoick continued, “but he said you’d probably rather have the plain one now than an inlaid one come winter. Go on, pick it up.”

Still a little suspicious of his father’s enthusiasm, Hiccup cautiously took hold of the axe and raised it. It came up much more easily than he had thought, and he grabbed the handle with his right hand as well as if it was going to fly away. The handle was a single, beautifully clean piece of ash, while the slender head had been split and welded around it.

“What the…” Hiccup peered more closely at the blade, and saw the distinctive gleam which meant that a harder, more brittle steel had been used to form the cutting edge. That was something which Gobber had said he would not learn for years yet, inserting the metal that would take a sharper edge but would be too brittle to make an entire axe head. Then he brushed his thumb over the edge, feather-light, and saw the well of blood on his skin before he felt the pain. “Hey!” he stuck his thumb in his mouth indignantly. “That is _sharp_.”

“The last of the Gronckle iron,” said Stoick. Hiccup looked up sharply. “So if you and Fishlegs could figure out what made it, I’d imagine that he’d appreciate it. But he said that it’s lighter than anything else he’s made, at least that would actually make for a fighting axe.”

Looking at the section of the blade, it was very clear why. The edge was knife-sharp, but the entire blade was so thin that it would never stand up to wood. It was made for cutting, not for weighty blows, and when Hiccup shifted it into just his left hand he could feel how well-balanced it was.

It made the hólmganga feel even more real.

His knees went weak, and he stumbled back, grabbing the table to keep himself upright as he gripped the axe handle so tightly that it hurt. It was one thing to be shot at by Alvin, or to grapple with an Arendellen guard, but the thought of not only having to face Mildew’s axe but being expected to strike back in return made him feel sick.

“Hiccup?” said Stoick? His voice seemed very far away, behind the roaring in Hiccup’s ears. “Hiccup, are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he said, the sound more than a little choked. One of Stoick’s hands came to rest on his shoulder, and the other gently drew the new axe out of his hand. “I just… I don’t want this fight. I don’t want to fight Mildew.”

The thought had been under his skin all along, murmuring in the back of his mind, making the axe and the shield seem heavier each day in his hands. But there was an edge in Stoick’s sigh.

“That is the whole point of the hólmganga, Hiccup.”

“I know, I…” he squeezed his eyes closed and tried to pluck words from the maelstrom of thoughts in his head. It was all shapeless turbulence, with white crests that might have been ideas but broke up and vanished again too quickly for him to be sure. “It’s not fight. Not that. I don’t want to _hurt_ Mildew.”

He would win. There was no other option. Losing would mean too much for the dragons, for Elsa, for his father; a repeat of his own humiliation frankly hardly factored into it, but now he had others relying on him as well and failing them was unthinkable. But the hólmganga would only end when one of them surrendered, which could only be even considered when the first blood had been drawn. It would not matter if he disarmed Mildew, if he knocked him to the ground. Unless blood was drawn, there was no end.

Stoick sighed, a long slow breath that softened as it went, and Hiccup finally bought himself to look up again. His father’s expression had saddened, the lines around his eyes seeming more marked again. “I see. Hiccup… in all truth, I cannot see Mildew wanting to fight beyond first blood. And it does not have to be much. Only one drop needs to hit the ground, you know that. The back of the arm, the outside of the leg – not dangerous places. Gothi will be right there to bind it as soon as the surrender is made.”

“And what if he does want to fight?” said Hiccup bitterly. “What if he won’t give up, what–”

“That will be his choice. You cannot make men’s choices for them, even if you think they are making them wrong.”

If Hiccup had been able to make the choices, it would have ended a long time before this. He shook his head. His call for hólmganga had been in hot anger; yes, he had thought that it was the right thing, the only way to stop Mildew’s constant attempts to undermine everything, every act just shy of actual treason that could be challenged and charged, but it had been in hot anger all the same. And the thought of walking out in two days and fighting in cold blood sickened him to the core. It was a choice to hurt, a choice he had never made before.

He picked up the axe once again, feeling the balance of it in his hand, the incredible lightness. He was not sure whether it would be able to cut through a shield. But through an axe-handle, perhaps. Maybe that was his way out, the sunlight creeping in between the chinks of the wall. Cut the handle, and Mildew had no weapon. One drop of blood, and it could be over.

“Have you ever fought a hólmganga?” he asked, impulsively.

Never had his father mentioned one. Even in the last few days, when he had acknowledged that Hiccup’s challenge had been genuinely made and genuinely met, that this fight would have to go ahead. But neither had Stoick said that he had never called for one, and surely that would have been among his arguments; a chief could call for a hólmganga, but usually only did so when the matter was more personal than political.

He did not expect his father’s long hesitation, or for Stoick to step back. “Aye,” said Stoick. “Twice. One when I was only a little older than you, and a man of another island made false claims against me. I was with my father, at a meeting of chiefs, and there was no other way to settle it in time. And the second…”

He trailed off, swallowing and averting his eyes for a moment. Hiccup did not know what to think, waiting for a response that he could not begin to imagine.

“The second was Alvin,” Stoick said finally.

It forced the breath from Hiccup’s lungs as he stared at his father. Alvin’s crime was treachery; he had carried it like a banner, proud, when Hiccup had met him. “What?”

“In our youth, Alvin was my right-hand man,” said Stoick. “Perhaps closer than Spitelout, closer than blood. When he sold us out to Weselton, it was treachery, but when he made a mockery of the trial, I took to him the only form of trial he would understand.”

“And… you won?” said Hiccup.

“He did not show himself. He might have bested me, with the injuries I bore then, but he would not take the risk.” Stoick’s brow furrowed, and bitterness flooded his voice as he turned to pace the length of the room. “I waited at the site until the sun had cleared the horizon, and then Alvin was declared nithingr, and the matter was done.”

It explained Alvin’s state as an Outcast, perhaps; by surrendering he might have been shamed, maybe even sentenced to death as punishment for what he had done, but by not appearing at all he had outcast himself and meant that anyone on Berk would be within the law to kill him. He had given up his status, not just as citizen, but as even human.

It was also anticlimactic. That was the only word that Hiccup could summon for it, the thought that after bringing war upon Berk, after being tried for treachery, Alvin would not even bother to turn up for the hólmganga. The idea that his father would not have won was so absurd that he could not even think on it, because everybody knew that Stoick’s hand had needed to be strong as well as steady to steer Berk through everything that had happened, but in refusing to show Alvin had shown himself to be a coward and worse.

“That was it?” said Hiccup. It should not have surprised him when Stoick nodded, but it still managed to. “After everything he did?” A disbelieving laugh broke from his lips. “Wow. I guess that if Mildew turns up, it will put him ahead of Alvin the Treacherous, at least.” He straightened up again and readied the axe in his left hand. “All right. I’m all right. Let’s… do this.”

“Alvin got involved in a number of hólmganga over the years,” said Stoick grimly. He took down from the wall the shield which Hiccup usually used, smaller and thinner than average, but tightly rimmed in rawhide and with narrow iron bands on the back to give it some strength. As a smith, it was easy for Hiccup to look at and think of the blows it would take, how long it would last in battle, but he was still struggling with the idea that he would be the one carrying it. “Over petty things, at times. He always won, though.”

“And Mildew?” said Hiccup, accepting the shield.

“Never, so far as I know.”

“Well, at least there’s one level battleground, I suppose.”


	18. Chapter 18

“I did mean to ask,” said Hiccup, as he watched the trainees – it was the only word on which he and Astrid had managed to agree – make their sketches and notes on their allotted dragons, “tomorrow. Um. I need to ask.” He ran a hand through his hair.

“If you’re not making me your second,” Astrid said, without looking round, “then you’re even more of a muttonhead than I thought.”

“Well, thank you for that vote of confidence.”

“That _is_ what you were going to ask, right?” Most of the time, Astrid was the one keeping a wary eye on Speedifist and Anna, while Hiccup tried to ensure that Wartihog and Clueless did not get up to anything too destructive. Clueless was probably going to be safe with Meatlug, but Wartihog had been visibly sulking until Hiccup agreed to let him do notes on Hookfang, while Anna was cooing over Stormfly and Speedifist was studiously looking over Barf and Belch. “Because otherwise, seriously. Muttonhead.”

“Yes,” he admitted.

“Good,” she said. “I’ve sharpened my axe.”

“It shouldn’t come to that,” said Hiccup. The words came out sharper than he intended, and he sighed. “Sorry. It shouldn’t even have come to this.”

“Well, it has. So we’d best make the most of it.”

Astrid was looking forward to it, in a sense, Hiccup understood that much. But he knew as well that it was settling the score which she anticipated, and putting a halt to Mildew’s malice. The method itself was inconsequential. He wished that he could feel as comfortable with what he had done.

“It’ll probably be axes,” Hiccup said. He wasn’t quite able to make himself look round, and tried to persuade himself that it was because he was keeping an eye on the trainees and the dragons. Anna was scratching a spot just under Stormfly’s wing which was making her scales rattle as she twitched happily. “My father said that much.”

Seconds were important, but Hiccup had not heard of one being called on to fight in a duel in Berk’s memory. Only if Mildew were to do something against the rules in order to injure Hiccup, like having another person attack him or arranging an accident before the duel itself – not options which Hiccup thought Mildew would take, but still not ones by which he would be entirely surprised – would Astrid be asked to step in. Otherwise, her role would only be to watch Mildew and ensure that he was following the rules, making her as much Stoick’s help as Hiccup’s.

“I’ve asked Elsa to watch Toothless, to make sure he doesn’t try to come out onto the sea stack as well,” he added. “And… I’ve asked Anna to keep an eye on Elsa, for the same reason.”

He rubbed his forehead. He was almost certain that Elsa would not try to intervene, but he had seen how she could respond when she was under pressure, when she was scared. In all honesty, Anna had at least as much of an impetuous streak, but she did not have wings or magic that would take her across the gap to the sea stack. Once the rope bridge was lowered, she would be securely on the far side.

“Mildew should count himself lucky that you play by the rules,” said Astrid wryly.

“I wouldn’t do otherwise.”

The words were so quiet that he did not fully expect Astrid to hear them, but the elbow to his ribs was undeniable acknowledgement.

“Clueless,” he said, having to raise his voice a little. “Don’t forget to take notes. On the paper.” He sighed. “By your right foot. _Right_ foot.”

How he could communicate with dragons more easily than with some people, he had absolutely no idea.

“Are you really going to do this every single day?” said Astrid flatly.

“No, tomorrow I get a day off.” There were some moments when it really felt like it. “And then I’m asking Gobber to help with some of the more… specialised classes.”

Hiccup knew that he was still learning himself when it came to the health of dragons, how to look over their wounds and, perhaps more important, how to treat them when they were sick. Though Gobber had admitted that he had never come across an incident with an eel like the one that Toothless had been through during the winter, he had certainly seen more over the years than Hiccup had yet. Perhaps one day, they would know even more, and the Book of Dragons might even be broken into more than one volume.

And frankly, he was not going to be in charge on the day that they learnt how to tell the sex of dragons in a manner that did not involve waiting for eggs. Perhaps it had been kind of Toothless to decide to groom himself, rather than Hiccup needing to guess or check.

“Do you reckon we could get them to clear out the pens for us?” said Astrid, with a wave to the trainees.

Mildew had apparently still not realised the nature of the manure that was used on his fields.

“Sounds like an excellent introduction to keeping dragons,” he said. “And showing why it’s good to take them out for a flight in the afternoon.”

 

 

 

 

 

That evening, Gobber insisted on adjusting Hiccup’s foot again, making it a fraction longer and then telling him to walk around on it until it felt level again. Hiccup was still far from convinced that he was actually getting taller as quickly as his foot seemed to indicate, but it gave him something to focus on other than the roiling sickness in his gut.

Once this was over, he knew, he owed Gobber a lot. Not just for the axe, or the foot, or for telling them all to sit down and eat and ignoring Stoick’s attempts to protest. Even over dinner, Gobber carried almost the whole of the conversation, with stories from his young travelling years, about dragons he had heard about and strange people he had met. Some day, perhaps, they would find out how many of the stories were true, and which were not.

He wasn’t sure how long he lay awake, staring out of the window over his bed. With the skies clear, he could see the stars and make up his own constellations of their glittering patterns, reading new stories into the same sky. Only when he saw how high the moon was getting did he close the window, give up, and curl under Toothless’s wing in search of sleep instead.

He dreamt of flying on his own black wings, with silver claws on his hands. Somehow, it felt right.

Unfortunately, he woke up face-first on the floor, having slid halfway off Toothless’s slate during the night, and his shoulder was stiff from the angle. At least it was his right shoulder.

“Hiccup?” said Stoick.

“I’m good,” Hiccup mumbled. Mornings were usually better than this, but it was the middle of summer and before dawn, and just as he sat up and looked around for where he’d put his foot he remembered why he was being woken so early. The hólmganga. With a groan, Hiccup put his forehead on his knee. “Nope. Not so good.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw his father hunker down in front of him, and give a nod to Toothless. Toothless rumbled, the sound so close that it ran through Hiccup as well. “Come now,” said Stoick softly. “You can do this.”

“I’m never saying hólmganga again,” said Hiccup.

Stoick chuckled, quiet and almost sad, and patted Hiccup on the shoulder. “I’m glad to hear it. I promise this one will be fine.”

Only a drop of blood, Hiccup told himself. One drop, and this could be over. He braced himself, raised his head, and met his father’s eye to nod. Stoick smiled, and passed him the foot that had rolled away during the night.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“It’s nothing. Come on now, you get dressed, and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

It would still be dark outside; they were meant to be there before the sun began to leave the horizon, and _had_ to be there by the time it left. Stoick had bought up a candle to set beside Hiccup’s bed, though, and the gesture touched him more than he expected, like a warm hand placed against his chest.

This was only against Mildew, he told himself sternly. There was no need to be so terrified of an old man whom he had never even seen holding an axe. But it didn’t stop Hiccup’s hands from shaking as he got dressed, in sturdy plain clothes that were getting a little old now but still fit well enough. He hesitated over his vest, with Toothless on the back. The last thing that he wanted was to see it damaged. But it was a sign of what he was fighting for, the right of the dragons to not be treated as Mildew treated them. Eventually he pulled it on, and hoped that it would make up for not being able to have Toothless there.

“Come on, bud,” he nodded for Toothless to follow him, picked up the candle, and made himself walk calmly down the stairs rather than trying to trot down and risking stumbling.

Gobber was waiting at the table, checking the edge of Hiccup’s new axe with his nail, and Anna and Elsa waited beside their door, one still yawning and the other looking cautious. Toothless immediately walked over and rubbed his cheek against Elsa’s hip, rumbling to himself, and she stroked his head even though her smile was tight.

“I won’t force breakfast down you if you don’t want it,” said Gobber, without preamble. “But if not, I’d appreciate if you at least drank some milk.” He pointed to a cup already set out on the table, with strips of toasted bread beside.

“Thanks, Gobber,” he replied. “And good morning. Or maybe good middle-of-the-night, Anna,” he added, with a slightly more playful look in Anna’s direction.

“I’m fine,” she said over another yawn. “I love getting up early. Best time of the day.”

Toothless headbutted her in the thigh, and she almost fell, catching herself on the doorway and trying to look dignified. She had at least managed to wrestle her hair into its braids and dress, though, even if her skirt looked to be on back to front.

“I know,” said Hiccup. “But I appreciate it anyway.”

He drank some of the milk and picked at the toast, grateful that it at least settled his stomach somewhat. When the door to the back room opened, he actually jumped before realising that it was just his father, of course it was just his father, and a flicker of sadness passed over Stoick’s face.

Hiccup wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Dad. Wondered where you’d gone.”

“Well, we’re ready to go in a minute. Got those already,” said Stoick, with a nod to the axe and shield waiting on the table. “Just needed to pick up these.”

He stretched out his hands, to reveal a pair of bracers in glossy black leather. They were far too small for him now, in length and width both, but Hiccup recognised them all the same. “I can’t take those,” he said, voice tight.

“You haven’t ones of your own, not ones that will fit any more,” said Stoick. He sighed. “It was an oversight, I know that. I should have made sure that you always had a pair. But now it has come to a moment when you very much need them.”

“I know, I mean, I know that I need them,” Hiccup had to put down the cup as he spoke, he felt so much as if he was going to drop it. “But I know what those are, Dad. I know that they’re dragonskin.”

The leather on his back had Toothless etched into it, like a banner on the battlefield to proclaim his allegiance. Wearing dragonskin on his arms would be the worst sort of betrayal of that. It made the back of his arms itch just to think about it, a squirming sensation down his back.

“Aye, and do you know what dragon?” said Stoick. Hiccup paused warily. Stepping forwards, Stoick put one of the bracers down on the table and set about putting the other on Hiccup’s arm; it was still a little large around, but was not so loose as to slip. “It was an Exterminator.” He did not have to add aloud that it was the one responsible for his brother’s death. “And these are a warning, perhaps, of what monsters dragons can become if we allow them to.”

“If we make them,” Hiccup corrected, without even thinking.

Stoick only hesitated for a brief instant. “If we make them,” he echoed softly, and did up the lacing on the first of them. Though it was still not as snug as it should have been, it would serve. “You’ll take them, then?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be standing still otherwise,” said Hiccup dryly, although it was hardly as if he could have escaped from his father’s hold. He had learnt that long ago.

Luckily, Stoick’s snort sounded more amused than annoyed as he moved on to the second bracer. “That is very true. There,” he said, as he quickly drew the second one tight. “Ready.”

“As I’ll ever be,” said Hiccup.

Stoick clapped him on the shoulder, mercifully not at full strength, and stepped back. As Gobber stood up, he slid the axe and shield in Hiccup’s direction, and Hiccup tried not to feel too much as if everyone was staring at him as he tied the axe to his belt and slung the shield over his shoulder. Considering they probably were, it was not all that successful.

This early on a summer morning, even Berk was not usually awake, but there were lights at the edges of doorways and movement that meant torches in the distance. They still had plenty of time before the sun rose, but already it was light enough to trust their eyes for footing as they made their way across the village, Stoick leading, Hiccup following and all too aware of the rest of the household behind him.

They walked in silence, with only the occasional crunch of a stone under someone’s foot, and that at its noisiest when it was Hiccup’s metal one. When they came within sight of the Hofferson house, Hiccup was not entirely surprised to see Astrid outside, refilling Stormfly’s water barrel. At the sight of them, she dumped in the last bucket and jogged over, axe and shield both already on her back. Both were more substantial than Hiccup’s, the axe double-headed and the shield faced in leather, but then again the axe had always been Astrid’s weapon of choice.

“Morning,” she said as she reached them.

“Morning,” said Hiccup, and was only a little surprised to hear his father say the same.

“My father’s going to be up there. He was on the guardtowers last night.” Astrid was not dressed any differently than usual, but considering she wore bracers and pauldrons at all times that was probably not such an issue as it would have been for Hiccup. Her hair was coiled right up, though, a braid across her brow to keep back even her fringe and then all of her hair curled round like a crown. It made her eyes look harder. “My mother’s still not back from the swamps.”

Stormfly might have made a run of the traplines easier, especially in the winter, but nobody had wanted to risk yet taking any of the dragons into the Northern Swamps that lay on the western flank of the island. There were plants there that had medicinal uses, many of which only bloomed at certain times of the year, and as they neared Midsummer, Runa had once again ventured into them. By now, she probably knew by heart which plants Gothi needed and when.

“Sorry,” Hiccup said. “Not the best of timing.”

He was reminded, in another guilty pulse, that this would be the first time Astrid would be involved in a hólmganga either. Plenty of people went their whole life without facing one, even on Berk where a quick impromptu scuffle was a not an unlikely way to end an argument. Such things were far more common on islands that interacted with others, where it would be possible to face someone and then never see them again.

“Don’t be.”

Although not quite an order, it was certainly not a suggestion, and cut short anything else that Hiccup might have been planning to say. As they continued on, Hiccup became increasingly aware of the doors opening as they passed, and a glance over his shoulder told that people were indeed filtering out of their houses to follow. The argument that had spawned this had been a spectacle enough, after all.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to take it back, cancel this whole affair, and instead take Mildew somewhere that they could at least have their argument in private even if it would still be little more than an exchange of insults. But there was no going back; to step down from the hólmganga would make him a coward and worse, even if it was not exactly fear that made his steps falter.

Finally, the seastacks came into view. The old land that had always been used for the hólmganga was one of the largest of them, squarish in shape, and reaching it meant crossing several short plank bridges that had been set up specifically for this day.

Gothi had beaten them there. Usually, Stoick would have been enough to oversee a hólmganga, but when Hiccup was involved he had decided that it would be better if there were someone who could truly be seen as unbiased.

“How the hell does _she_ manage this?” said Anna from behind him, as she picked her way over the first bridge. Hiccup looked round to see that she was holding on to both ropes and watching the planks very closely.

“Practice,” he replied. Once, he might have considered following it with a joke about magic, but nowadays he would rather be more careful with such comments. “And possibly a lower centre of gravity.”

Muttering something about lowering centres, which made no sense at all, Anna continued to follow him across the second bridge, with Elsa right behind her watching carefully and keeping one hand free. A third bridge lead them to the small stack immediately adjacent to the hólmganga-ground, and then there was only one more to cross.

At the head of the bridge, Hiccup paused, not wanting to admit to himself that it was a hesitation. He nodded to Anna and Elsa, then stepped back for a moment to run his hands over Toothless’s cheeks. “You need to stay here for a while, bud. Stay with Elsa. It shouldn’t take long.”

Toothless chirped, a question in the little twitch upwards of his nose, and Hiccup bowed his head so that his nose brushed against Toothless’s. There were already more than a handful of people on the other stacks nearby, including Carr, but he did not care if they saw. Toothless was just one of the reasons that he was doing this.

For the second, he pulled Elsa into a tight hug, and the fact that she put her hands onto his back without a pause and rested her cheek against his meant more than almost anything he knew.

“Be careful,” she breathed into his ear.

He rubbed his hand between her shoulderblades. “I will.”

The sun had not started to rise yet, but he could see the nearing of dawn in the lightening of the sky. They had a clear view to the eastern horizon from here. Reluctantly, he let go and turned to the plank bridge, girding his loins to cross it.

A few short steps and he was across, Astrid right behind him, and then Stoick’s silent, stern presence. The eight stakes that formed the square hólmganga-ground were already in place, demarking a patch of thin earth and bare limestone that would, at least, not turn to slippery mud and risk Hiccup’s still occasionally precarious footing.

No sign of Mildew, though. Gothi looked them all over and nodded, and Stoick crossed to stand beside her while Hiccup and Astrid took up their place at one side of the square. It was quiet, even those onlookers who had already gathered watching without speaking, and the breeze was light off the sea.

“Wonder who’ll act as Mildew’s second,” Astrid said quietly. Hiccup remembered his thoughts about sheep, from days ago, and fought to keep a straight face. “I doubt he’s got kin who’ll stand up for him.”

By custom, it probably should have been Snotlout at Hiccup’s side. Seconds were usually battle-brothers or family, and the former were often the latter besides. Hiccup wondered whether it had been Spitelout who had stood as his father’s second, those years ago. But Hiccup did not think that Snotlout would want that dubious honour, no matter what his own feelings on the matter were or were not.

“No love lost from his wives’ families either,” said Hiccup. Mildew was still counted as being of _Berk_ , of course, and the village would treat him as one of its own. He had as much right as anyone else to food from the village stores, water from the village well, a team from the village to help him dig himself out after the worst of the storms. But being part of the village meant giving back as well, and Mildew was mean with what he gave to anyone. It could only have rankled more if – and Hiccup had little doubt of this – he had been stingy with what he shared with his families by marriage as well.

“Do you think Azora or Mudbreath might stand for him?”

Hiccup pursed his lips. “They argued against the dragons, but Azora did not seem to mind Elsa. Mudbreath… perhaps. He’s spoken against her before.”

Astrid stretched her neck from side to side. “And if he can’t find anyone gullible enough?”

“That’s why my father agreed it would be best to have Gothi here,” said Hiccup. “You check the stakes on my behalf… if need be, she can check them on his. Nobody will accuse her of favouring anyone.”

Gothi might have had a wicked streak and a complete unwillingness to suffer fools, but she was certainly scrupulously fair. It seemed as if everyone on Berk had felt her healing hands at some time or another, and there was no sign of that stopping any time soon.

Even Astrid nodded. “That works.”

They lapsed back into silence again, as the sky grew almost white at the horizon. Hiccup wanted to fidget with nervousness, but kept his hands still at his side, the shield level on his back. The handle of the axe bumped against his right thigh.

“You know, I did think he’d pick Fungus,” he blurted as the silence grew too much, and to judge by the muscle that twitched in Astrid’s jaw it was her turn to fight to keep a straight face. “Not sure how well he’d hold an axe, though.”

“Bastard,” Astrid breathed, the corner of her mouth definitely twitching.

“And I did consider asking Toothless to be my second, but I’m not sure he’d actually fit in the hólmganga-ground.”

“I swear, one more word and I will push you off this sea-stack myself.”

Although almost entirely sure she was joking, Hiccup decided not to risk it, and looked around just in time for the first edge of the sun to creep over the horizon and blaze across the sea. He let out a long, deep breath. “And there’s the beginning of sunrise.”

Still no sign of Mildew, and he should have been here already. Could the man be panicking at the last minute, whatever nerve he had summoned to answer the hólmganga challenge failing him? He had been seen around Berk from time to time, even yesterday, although he had not spoken to anyone and had apparently stayed well away from where he might run into Hiccup or the other riders. But he still had until the sun was fully risen, however short a time that might be in the summer.

“At least the sky’s clear,” said Astrid.

“We have the sunstone, if not.”

Astrid wrinkled her nose. “I prefer to see it clearly. Then you know _exactly_ what you’re dealing with.”

The moments trickled past, in heartbeats and the rhythm of the waves crashing beneath them, and Hiccup had to avert his eyes to watch the sun through his peripheral vision. The talking on the neighbouring seastacks grew louder, the numbers of people there still swelling, and people looked around as if Mildew was suddenly going to be found among their number instead.

“This is absurd,” Astrid said sharply. “Surely he wouldn’t…”

“He had to know that he was pushing too far.” Shadows stretched away from beneath all of their feet, so long as to reach the other seastacks. Halfway through the sunrise. Hiccup curled his hands into fists to hide how they were shaking, part nerves and part a worrying rush. “Toothless, even Elsa, I might have walked away from. But he had to know…”

He could not even put words around what Mildew had said. Hiccup’s memories of his mother were so faint that, as he had admitted to Elsa, sometimes he was not sure that they were his memories at all. But there were lines, lines that Hiccup could not allow Mildew or anyone to cross.

“He had to know it would be too much.”

“Maybe that was the idea.” Her voice took on a bitter tone. “Maybe he thought that if he pushed with words, he could get you to do something that looked like it was crossing a line. Make you into the bad guy.”

“And then not even turn up?” Hiccup turned to look at her.

“Maybe he didn’t imagine that you’d do this.”

Perhaps it was that ridiculous a thought. That Hiccup would actually come out with the idea of a hólmganga. Perhaps Mildew had intended to rile Hiccup into attacking him there and then – or had expected Hiccup to set Toothless or Elsa on him like they were attack dogs barely leashed. The idea itself made a surge of anger run through Hiccup again, and it was enough to make him want Mildew to come here. To show Mildew what sort of man he could be.

The talk around them, which had risen to almost chatter, died away abruptly as Gothi raised her staff. Hiccup shielded his eyes and squinted at the horizon, and shuddered when he realised that there was indeed sky to be seen between sun and sea again.

Stoick looked around, one final chance, then stepped forward and turned to Gothi. He nodded, and she inclined her head in return. Taking hold of her staff in both hands, she bought it down with a sharp crack on the exposed rock.

“Nithingr!” Stoick shouted. The talk around them fell instantly silent.

A second time, Gothi struck the ground with the butt of her staff.

“Nithingr!”

Hiccup held his breath, head spinning, as he watched the third strike.

“Nithingr!”

And suddenly, without a blow, it was over.

 

 

 

 

It took some work from Stoick to even thin the crowd enough for them to get through to the shore again, and Gobber had to work to keep people from flooding back and demanding to know what was going on.

“We need to check his house,” said Hiccup. It would be the only way to be sure of what was going on.

“Aye,” Stoick said, voice grim. “Astrid, fetch that dragon of yours. I’m going to get Thornado.”

Astrid stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled, putting some real force behind it for the sound to cut through the talking turning to shouting behind them. There was an answering shriek from down in the village, and within moments Stormfly appeared above the houses, movement more than colour against the early-morning sky.

Before Stoick had to leave, Hiccup gave Toothless a nudge. Throwing back his head, Toothless fired two light shots into the air, purple fires that flashed in the sky and cracked with sound but were, for a Night Fury, gentle. Hiccup put a hand on his father’s arm to still him, hoping that it would work, and was relieved when Thornado made his slower way into view, with a roar that felt almost rhythmic on Hiccup’s chest even across the distance.

“I’m working on whistles,” he said, when his father looked round.

Stoick snorted. “Not like that beast listens to anything.”

Why Stoick and Thornado got on so much, Hiccup could not possibly think. Knowing roughly what his father was thinking, he turned to the others. “Elsa, do you want to come with me? Anna, with Astrid?” A glance at Stoick earnt him a faint nod, permission he probably should have asked for before giving orders, but with Stormfly and Thornado fast approaching Hiccup was more concerned with getting enough room cleared for them to take off, and making sure that Toothless’s saddle and tail were firmly in place.

It was all getting quicker now, easier, dragons and humans both knowing their roles to get up and into the air as quickly as possible. The hardest part was getting people to back up enough for Toothless to get his wings fully extended.

“All right,” shouted Stoick, once they were in the air. “Let’s get to Mildew’s house.”

This was not hólmganga, not any more. By all rights, this was Stoick’s choice to make, the chief checking on his people, and the rest of them – save perhaps Hiccup – were sticking their noses in where they were not needed. But Hiccup would not dream of not having the others with him, not now, for all their different reasons; it seemed that being a dragon rider was so strange that the title alone stopped people from questioning him.

Thornado was the slowest of the three dragons, though he could still manage bursts of speed and had extraordinary power for his weight, and despite the urge to scythe through the air Hiccup held Toothless back so that they could follow. He kept his eyes on his father’s back, until they landed on the open land outside Mildew’s isolated house.

“Mildew!” Stoick roared, the sound fit for a dragon in its own right. Hiccup was glad that he was behind that shout. “Mildew Sharnson! As Chief of Berk I come to warn you that by failing to show for the hólmganga you have declared yourself nithingr!” He rose from Thornado’s back, and Hiccup dismounted along with the others. “At sunset, your life will be declared forfeit on Berk. Show yourself, while you still can!”

Nothing but the muffled bleating of sheep answered him. Stoick looked around them, taking in every angle of the land, every tree. He drew his axe, holding it loose and low, and Hiccup saw Astrid ready her axe in turn.

“Mildew!” called Stoick again. He walked slowly towards the house, along the path where the grass had been worn away by years of footfall, and looked over the front of it. The windows were shuttered tightly, not a chink of light in them. “Mildew, show yourself!”

As the silence continued, Stoick stepped up beside the door, keeping his body clear of it. Astrid gestured for the others to stay back as she took up position on the other side. Finally raising his sword, Stoick opened the door and pushed it inwards quickly, and even Hiccup flinched in half-expectation of an attack or a shot that never came.

Instead, the door swung open with a slight creak, and that was all. Stoick looked inside, then lowered his sword again as he stepped in, footsteps thudding in the empty room.

“He’s not here,” said Astrid, the words dripping as much acid as a Changewing could ever produce.

Mildew’s house was small, one-storey, with only a crude bed and table. Even so, Stoick walked around the whole room, throwing open the curtain over the bed and that which closed off a corner of the room. Behind the latter were dragon trophies, a pair of Zippleback’s feet and the claw of a Monstrous Nightmare, and if Hiccup had not already burnt through all of his anger he undoubtedly would have felt it then.

The room was cold, and had an abandoned feel. They all recognised it, on Berk, that atmosphere of a place that had been truly left behind. All the same, there was one place left to check, and Hiccup walked round to the back of the building where the door to the sheep pen was still closed. He threw it open, and one of the sheep right at the door looked straight at him and bleated accusingly.

“It wasn’t me who shut you in,” Hiccup muttered, and did his best to wave the sheep outside. It would be easier to count them out here than milling in the gloom of the pen. One by one, the sheep meandered out, and it did not take advanced mathematics to count them. “Six,” he said flatly.

“Yeah, I make it six as well,” said Anna. “Is… that important?”

He didn’t blame her if she was just looking for something to do, or say, to help. “He’s had seven since last winter, when… when he lost Canker.” It was hard to forget, having been up here looking for Wartlout and finding more disturbing evidence instead. “One of them’s gone. Probably Fungus, that one that follows him around all the time.”

Hiccup didn’t have the knack of telling sheep apart, though he knew that plenty of people did. Probably just a case of spending enough time around them. The twins swore that they could tell yaks apart as well, and honestly he had never been able to bring himself to argue with them over it.

“No sign of him,” said Stoick, exiting the house again. “Nor his staff.”

It struck Hiccup in a moment of absurdity, and he burst out laughing in the middle of the sheep, in Mildew’s shoddy fields outside Mildew’s shoddy house. “Mildew just matched Alvin,” he said.

Only his father could have possibly understood, but to Hiccup the image was just too ridiculous to not laugh at. Mildew, fleeing a fight with a one-legged runt, had finally managed to match the terrible Alvin the Treacherous in actions, if not in infamy. Hiccup had to lean on one of the sheep as he laughed, all of the tension of the last days and the fear and the sickness igniting and breaking out of him.

“ _What_?” said Astrid finally, breaking the tableau as they stared at him. Better to be stared at for laughter than for weapons.

Stoick came to his rescue by replying. “Nineteen years ago, Alvin the Treacherous failed to attend a hólmganga when he was challenged to. It was that act which made him an Outcast. It seems that Mildew has chosen the same.”

Only Alvin had gone to Outcast Island and wrested leadership from whoever had claimed it before, and there was no way that Mildew could be planning something like that. “Could he have gone into the Wildlands?” Hiccup asked, turning to Elsa. “Would they take him in?”

She shook her head. “They are afraid, of people from Berk. They would…” she hesitated, with a glance in Anna’s direction that was almost shamed. “They would kill him.”

“And he’s got too much to say against them besides,” said Stoick. “No, if he plans to go anywhere, it will be by sea. I’ll have Spitelout…” he deflated, the words fading from his lips. “No. He has until nightfall, before we are allowed to seek him. I will have Spitelout and Phlegma help me to ensure that all of the village is aware.”

“Now do you believe me?” said Hiccup. “About the sheep? The eel?”

Stoick paused, but nodded. “Aye,” he said quietly. “The sort of man to do this would be the sort to do that, also.”

A darker suspicion clenched in his gut, and he felt something rise in him, something almost like anger but darker and more viscous. “And Wartlout,” he said. “That was against the dragons, too. Alvin wouldn’t have wasted his time on something like that, wouldn’t have cared. And Wartlout said that he never saw who took him.”

That was family, too. Something which Mildew had never seemed to understand.

“Then,” said Stoick, “he had better hope that he is long gone from this island before nightfall.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Sharnson" is from the Doric "sharn", meaning cowpat. The author regrets nothing.


	19. Chapter 19

They spent the morning in the air, flying over the waters north of Berk in ever-further arcs, on the absurd possibility that there was a boat out with Mildew upon it. Hiccup had been glad to shed the shield and axe, no matter how much he appreciated the work that Gobber had done, and felt better on Toothless’s back with the wind in his hair and the sun on his cheek.

Astrid kept her axe with her. He could not blame her for that.

As it neared midday, he admitted defeat, and drew to a halt. Toothless could always stay ahead of the other dragons with no problem, and Hiccup held up a hand, fist clenched, for the rest of them to stop as well. Fishlegs, Astrid and Snotlout did so. The twins, naturally, streaked straight past.

“Oh, for the love of – Ruffnut! Tuffnut!” Hiccup cupped his hands around his mouth. “Get back here!”

There was a shout on the wind that might have been, “Where no-one goes!”

“They are going to get themselves shot down one day,” said Snotlout. It worried Hiccup that he didn’t exactly disagree with that assessment.

He sighed. “I’ll catch them in a minute. As for you guys, thank you for coming out this morning, but it looks as if there’s nothing to report out here. No academy means a day off for you guys as well, so… enjoy it.”

“Would’ve been more enjoyable kicking Mildew’s butt,” said Snotlout. The look of worry that crossed Astrid’s face meant that _she_ had probably agreed with that one.

“Well, that’s not allowed until sunset anyway,” Hiccup said. It really was not worth the argument right now. “You guys head back, I’ll get back to you once I’ve caught…”

He trailed off as he realised the others were looking straight past him, and sure enough a few seconds later a whoop trailed back into hearing again. The twins shot past them in the other direction, pressed low over Barf and Belch’s heads and pushing them as fast as they could go. Hiccup sighed.

“The twins.”

On the other hand, at least them coming back had made his job easier. It only took a touch from his knee for Toothless to understand, and they shot after the Zippleback in great wing-sweeps. It took only a few to draw up alongside the Zippleback, and Hiccup angled them in the air so that he was leaning towards the twins.

“Guys! Patrol is over! Head home!”

“What?” said Ruffnut, with a wild grin. One of her braids was smacking against her forehead, but she did not seem to notice. “When we’re having this much fun?”

Letting them get more practice flying could only be a good thing, he supposed. “Well, just head in Berk’s general direction,” he shouted. “And don’t let Barf and Belch get too tired!”

He left them to it, and peeled back to the others, still not even all that far away. As he approached, Astrid gave him a pointed look before pulling Stormfly upwards, not too far but enough that she was definitely clear of them. He joined her at that altitude, letting Toothless drop back into what was, for him, a gentle flight.

“I’m sorry we didn’t fight him,” she said.

He shrugged. There had been plenty of time to think while they had been flying, everything about the movement was so easy now. “I’m not. Maybe it’s better this way.”

“You don’t think he might jeopardise Berk? Tell wherever he’s going about us?”

“Would you believe a strange old man with a sheep obsession if he claimed that the island worst affected by dragon attacks was now friends with them?”

Astrid paused, but then nodded, even if she did not look too impressed about it.

“Besides,” said Hiccup, letting his voice soften, “he’s lived on Berk his whole life. It had to mean giving up a lot to leave.”

This time, she shook her head. “You are too nice.”

It didn’t exactly sound like a compliment, but as far as Hiccup was concerned there were far worse things to be accused of than excessive niceness. They flew most of the way back in companionable silence, but a glitter of white at the academy caught his attention as they drew closer to Berk, and he drew his spyglass from its pouch at his belt to peer closer.

“What the…” he had a suspicion before he even looked, but it only took an instant to confirm that it was ice covering the bars that made up the roof of the academy. “Uh, Astrid, do you see that?”

Astrid had her own spyglass out, and was looking in the same direction. “Pretty sure I do.”

She did not even ask before giving Stormfly her head, cutting faster through the air than any other dragon save Toothless could manage. Hiccup followed suit, at first matching her pace then, as they drew closer to the academy and it became clear that ice covered not just the bars but also some of the seating around them, reaching for the full speed of the Night Fury.

The air whistled around them, and Astrid ducked as they whipped past. The world blurred, narrowing down to the academy, and it took them just heartbeats to get there, Toothless’s wings snapping out to brake as they right on the bars themselves.

“Elsa!” shouted Hiccup, leaning sideways in the saddle to look down. “Are you all right?”

The first thing that he saw was Anna, lying spread-eagled on the snow-covered floor of the academy and waving her arms and legs back and forth. “Hiccup!” she called, sitting up. “Come on! It’s a snow day!”

If Anna was laughing and playing in the snow, that had to mean that Elsa was all right, but Hiccup still looked around until he caught sight of her, sitting at the foot of a snowdrift with snow in her hair and a guilty smile on her face. The panic in his chest finally ebbed as he let Toothless pick their way down the bars to the top of the walls, and slid carefully out of the saddle.

“Should I even ask?” he said.

Elsa looked sheepishly at Anna, who had got to her feet and, at Hiccup’s look, spun on the spot with her arms outstretched. “A snow day, get it? Like when we were kids! When the snow got really bad in Arendelle, all the shops would close and people would stop working, even our tutor!”

“Yeah, if Berk stopped for the snow, we’d never get anything done,” said Hiccup, but smiled. He crouched down next to the bars, looking around the floor of the arena. Mounds of fluffy white snow were scattered haphazardly about, and a lopsided snowman stood next to the ramp with two sticks for arms and lumps of charred wood down his front like buttons. Fern-like patterns of ice curled up the walls, then wrapped like tendrils around the bars of the roof. “But you’re having fun, right?”

He looked more at Elsa, who nodded.

“Come and join us!” said Anna. “Go on, jump down! The snow’s like landing on a pillow, it’s great!”

The last time that Hiccup had jumped into the arena, it had been to save Fishlegs from a furious Nadder who had at that point not even been named. Then again, the last time there had been snow in the _academy_ , he had still been using his cane to walk. As Stormfly caught up with them, Hiccup gave Astrid a wave which he hoped would communicate that everything was fine, then slid down under the lowest bar and let himself drop into the snow.

It swallowed him up in soft cold, to half-way up his chest, and Hiccup could not help laughing as he tried to squirm his way out again. It was far from elegant, even when he managed to work his left foot down to the floor and stumbled the rest of the way out of the snowdrift in a manner approaching upright.

“Toothless, go round to the ent– no, Toothless–”

He did not manage to get there in time before Toothless aimed for the largest gap between the bars that he could see and set about squirming through, mouth open with his tongue lolling out and flaps perking. Hiccup put a hand over his eyes, then slid it down to cover his chin as Toothless wormed his way through the bars, part-unfurling one wing to fit, then as he managed to get his hips through losing his footing and tumbling onto his back in the snow below.

“Well done, bud,” he said to the waving legs and whipping tail that protruded from the snowdrift. Toothless’s head popped up, then in a tangle of limbs he managed to right himself and half-roll out of the snow, shaking it off his flaps as he did so. Turning to Elsa, Hiccup felt his smile soften. “This looks really good.”

She looked over at her sister with that same, fond smile that still bloomed on her. “Anna persuaded me. Like when we were children.”

That was what she had said before, as well.

“Oh!” said Anna. “You should have seen what she made earlier, as well!” As Elsa mumbled something, looking sheepishly flattered, Anna bounded over to them Hiccup through the snow, grabbed him by the hand, and hauled him over towards Elsa. “An ice dragon!”

“An ice dragon?” he was not at all sure what mental image he was supposed to summon for that one, and looked at Elsa in surprise.

“A small one,” she said quickly, gesturing with her hands to something less than a foot long.

“It was so _cute_ ,” said Anna.

“You think all dragons are cute,” Hiccup said, which at least made Elsa laugh.

“Go on,” Anna said, with a tug on Elsa’s sleeve. “Show him. Please?”

It was exactly the tone that Hiccup had heard Fishlegs’s younger siblings use, and it seemed that Elsa was just as susceptible to it. She sighed at Anna, but smiled, and patted the hand on her arm before pulling back a step out of reach. Anna clapped in delight, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

The concentration came back over Elsa’s face, the one that he had seen before. She rolled her hands around each other, and a spark of blue light formed between them, grew and swelled until it was maybe six inches across. Elsa closed her hands slightly, one above and one below, so that the light rested on the palm of the lower one. It was difficult to look at directly for too long, but between blinks Hiccup saw the light begin to change shape, flatten into an oval, and then tuck up and start to become more detailed.

He heard the tinkling, cracking sound of forming ice, and then the light faded to reveal a translucent blue Night Fury in Elsa’s hand, wings furled to its side, tail outstretched. Elsa carefully scooped her other hand beneath it as well, then after a shy glance offered it to Hiccup.

“Wow,” he breathed. He took hold of it carefully, as if it would shatter beneath his touch, but the ice was firm and cool and showed no signs of breaking as he picked it up. It was detailed down to the flaps around the head and, Hiccup realised with a clench in his chest, the missing tail fin. “Hey, bud!” he called to Toothless, knowing that he needed to distract himself before his eyes started to water. “Come and check this out!”

Toothless looked up, snow on his nose, then loped over to sniff enthusiastically at what Hiccup held out to him. His nose brushed the ice, and he snorted, pulling his head back again sharply.

“Not sure he knows what to make of it,” said Hiccup.

“Do you think you could make a full-sized one?” Anna said, brushing some melting snow off her forehead. A look of alarm crossed Elsa’s face. “I mean, I’m not saying that you have to! I just figured, well, you might be able to.”

“This is still pretty amazing,” said Hiccup. He ran one thumb over the Night Fury’s head. “I’m pretty sure if you painted it black, it would look like a baby Night Fury.”

That was a strange pang in his chest, as well, having seen the hatchlings of the other four dragon species but not Toothless’s. Not that he had seen Terrible Terror hatchlings yet either, but there were pictures of them in Bork’s notes. Night Furies were still a mystery, Toothless seemingly the only one of his kind.

“Thank you,” Elsa said finally. She brushed her left thumb over her right palm. “But I am still not sure what I can do… safely.”

Of the four of them, only Astrid had not seen the great and terrible edifice of ice which Elsa had made for herself in the mountains. The chaotic, destructive magic as they had fled Arendelle had been nothing to that. As the thought crossed Hiccup’s mind, Astrid appeared at the doorway to the academy, Stormfly padding in more cautiously behind her.

“Not letting the twins ruin it this time, then?” she said, taking in the snow and ice.

“Be fair, you were in that snowball fight as well,” he replied, when Elsa hesitated still.

Astrid rolled her eyes. “Like you wouldn’t have been if you’d had use of both hands.”

“Elsa,” said Hiccup, as an idea occurred to him, “how about you… just see what you can do? In the academy, I mean,” he said, as her eyes widened. “We can step outside if you’d rather, to give you the room, and you can just…” he waved vaguely. “Let go.”

“I don’t want anything to happen again,” she said, voice small.

“It won’t,” said Anna.

Hiccup nodded to the stands that looked down into the academy itself. “We can sit up there, out of the way, take the dragons with us. If this place can handle a Monstrous Nightmare, I think it can handle a bit of ice. And you can stop, whenever you want.”

The look that she gave Anna was a jumble of emotions, fear all-too-present but something in there as well that was perhaps hope. In response, Anna gave her two thumbs up and a grin, and relieved laughter fell from Elsa’s lips even though there were tears in her eyes.

“All right,” she said. “Yes.”

Her shoulders had relaxed even as she said the words, and Anna pounced to give her another hug before joining Astrid and Hiccup to return to the door. Hiccup looked over his shoulder as they reached it, just in time to see Elsa take a deep breath, close her eyes, and draw her hands together in front of her stomach like sweeping up a scattering of leaves. As her hands came parallel, the snow around her glittered, and began to rise up and together, flowing towards her like an upside-down hourglass so that it poured impossibly into the ball of blue light in her hands.

He loitered in the doorway until Astrid grabbed his sleeve and pulled him away, and when he fumbled so as not to drop the ice dragon it crumbled to light in his fingers and was whisked away as well.

Jogging up the stairs, Hiccup reached the top and slid into the gap next to Anna on the closest bench just as Elsa opened her eyes to look at the sphere of magic in her hands again. She switched it to one hand, held it higher, and breathed across it. Snow formed in small eddies on her breath, and fluttered to the ground. Taking a deep breath, she blew harder to judge by the great swirl of snow that followed, reaching far enough to form a spiral on one of the closed doors of the pens.

Elsa rolled up the light up onto her fingertips, where it balanced like a ball for a moment, then as she turned her wrist it flowed down over her hand like thick honey, coating her skin in the glow. Before it reached her wrist, she tugged back her sleeve, and as the light spread it thinned, becoming like streams leading into rivers, breaking up into hair-fine threads that reached almost to her elbow. As the glow faded, the ice remained, and Hiccup saw her test her fingers, flexing them in one rippling motion. They glittered in the sun.

“Interesting,” muttered Astrid, who had her elbows on her knees. Hiccup did not trust himself to speak, did not want to risk breaking the silence again.

In truth, Astrid was right and more; it was fascinating. He had seen Elsa create spines and sheets and armour out of ice, but this was more delicate, more deliberate, perhaps closer to the balls and dice that Anna had encouraged her to make but at the same time more elegant still.

Switching to her right hand, she flicked it in the air, and snow whirled from her fingertips to drift as light as feathers. A second flick, this time with a larger movement of her arm, produced more. In a few steps, Elsa crossed to the wall and placed her fingertips against it; ice spread from her touch, webbing out across the rock, and she watched it trace upwards to the metal bars of the roof and drip down to hang in clear icicles.

She flicked her wrist, and a cane of ice shot into being, like the one that Hiccup remembered her using back in those first days in the sinkhole beneath Berk. A moment’s pause, intent concentration on her face, and then Elsa flicked it again and it grew longer, to the length of the staves that Astrid had used to spar with her.

As if at the reminder of her audience, Elsa looked up at them, sharply and like jumping. Hiccup did his best to make his smile reassuring, and after he elbowed Astrid in the ribs even she straightened up and smiled instead of watching like she was taking in battle tactics. Elsa’s smile in return was thin and cautious, but she set the staff carefully against the wall, then stepped back and looked up at the roof with clear consideration in her expression. Hiccup could not even guess what was coming next, and when Elsa made a gesture like an underarm throw, a flick of her wrist at the end, he watched in amazement as ice seemed to shoot out into the form of a rope, lashing up and wrapping itself around the bars of the roof. No knot, of course; it closed as neatly as any welded axehead, and then Elsa let it slip between her fingers to brush against the floor of the academy.

“And useful,” Astrid said, in even more of an undertone.

Elsa looked at her hands, one bare and one gloved in ice, and clenched and relaxed them both together a couple of times. She seemed lost in her thoughts, and Hiccup found himself wondering just what she could do. Or perhaps it would be quicker to wonder what she _couldn’t_ do. Then she looked down, hitched up her skirt with her bare hand, and stamped her foot against the floor.

Ice spread from the impact of her heel, almost splashing out across the floor of the academy in fern-and-feather patterns, a shining clear blue. Elsa paused, looking thoughtful, and Hiccup wondered whether that had not been what she had intended – and if not, what she _had_ intended – just as she stamped again. This time, the ice rose in clear sheets, like ripples on a pond but stretched up so that the walls closest to her, forming a circle barely a yard across, were above her head. They faded away quickly enough, only half a dozen in all, so fine that they barely caused a distortion of her image.

She ran her hand down the ice right in front of her, then before Hiccup could call down and ask if she needed help she thrust the palm of her hand against the surface.

It was not a slap, because there was never the sound of a strike. Instead the ice in front of her shattered, every ring of it, and in less than a blink there were spikes of the same ice on the far wall, in a tight group and wickedly sharp

It was the first thing that Hiccup had seen that was not at all a defence. Even Elsa paused for a moment, looking at the spikes with an almost troubled expression, then she stepped across the shards of ice around her and turned to roll into her shoulder, pushing her hand over the ground with force behind it, white light pouring from her palm. It formed ice on the ground, a ramp building upwards and glittering into spikes at the end that became sharp and fine, growing in height until they were over eight feet tall.

She whirled on the spot, making a slashing motion with her hand, and a semi-circle of wicked spikes sprung up around her. They glittered in the light, near-transparent and flawless, not at all the murky white that Hiccup had seen some of Elsa’s ice become. But then her look of determination slipped, her eyes widened, and she stumbled backwards from the icy forms as if she were seeing them for the first time.

“Elsa?” Anna rose from her seat, worry written on her face, then jumped to her feet and was thundering down the steps before Hiccup could even think to stop her.

“Oh Thor,” he said, scrambling to his feet after her. Elsa had only looked as if she were even considering using her magic once the rest of them were out of the arena, and he did not know how she would take to Anna barging back in again. He took the stairs down two at a time, Astrid right behind him, and skidded round the corner at the top of the ramp with his heart in his mouth.

Perhaps he should not have worried. Anna had already pulled Elsa into a tight hug, and Elsa had her face turned to her sister’s shoulder.

“It’s all right,” Anna was saying, voice low but firm. “You’re in control of it. It’s not going to get out of control.”

The ice around them was turning to blue light, drifting upwards to cluster on the bars of the roof above them. Hiccup slowed, putting up an arm to stop Astrid from running in, and picked his way more carefully towards both of them.

At the scrape of Hiccup’s foot on the floor, Elsa’s head jerked up. He stopped, holding up both of his hands. “It’s all right! It’s just us.”

Elsa swallowed, looking once or twice as if she were about to start speaking, but nothing was forthcoming. Anna rubbed in a circle between her shoulderblades.

“The ice got sort of… aggressive,” said Anna finally, when it became clear that Elsa was still struggling for words. The relief that flooded Elsa’s face was the only thing that stopped Hiccup from saying that Elsa should be able to speak for herself. “It happened a couple of times when we were practicing before. Like… a spiky ring instead of a plain one,” she said, with a small shrug.

“Well, I saw a pretty good ramp, and a good way to hunt boar,” Astrid said, gesturing to where the eight-foot spikes and the wall of them had been.

Elsa smiled in a way that suggested she knew exactly what Astrid was doing, but did not look offended. “Perhaps,” she said.

“That was still really, really good,” said Hiccup. “And now…” he waved around them, to where the last of the ice had faded, “you can tidy up as well. That’s a lot better than the twins.”

It wasn’t quite enough for a laugh, but Elsa did at least smile more truly, and even stepped back out of Anna’s half-embrace. She looked up to the magic glittering above them, like a strange spiderweb where it clung to the bars, and reached up with her left hand, fingers outstretched. There, the ice remained, in the root-like glove. As she reached up, the light poured down, swirling into her fingers in a narrow vortex and gleaming like a star in the palm of her hand. When it was all gathered, she closed her hand around it, and the ice trailing up her wrist finally ran in, like water to the sea, until her skin was bare as well. Then the light winked out, and the magic was done.

Elsa still looked at her hand a little as if there was a weapon in it, but she held her head higher than before, Hiccup was sure of it. Faint fear was better than deep terror, it had to be.

“So,” he said, “do you want to track down some lunch? I probably should have eaten this morning, after all. Even if I might have ended up throwing up on Mildew in the hólmganga. Who knows, it might have counted as a ranged attack.”

In truth, he was not all that hungry even now, but it was something to say and he knew that food was usually an easy way to win Elsa’s attention.

“You did not find him?” It probably should not have surprised him that Elsa caught those words, smile slipping away again.

“No sign,” he admitted. “It looks like he’s left for good. If he’s seen on Berk…” he could not bring himself to admit to Elsa what would quite likely happen. “Justice would come to him. He won’t come back.”

At least, he would not if he had any sense. What allies Mildew might have had when it came to the dragons and Elsa, he would undoubtedly have lost them for his cowardice. Turning up and surrendering almost immediately would have been less shameful. Hiccup wondered, with a sick crawl down his spine, what Mildew had thought might happen at the hólmganga. Surely the old man could not have believed that Hiccup would want to kill him. He could not even think of it as a question, because a question meant a chance, and Hiccup could not wrap his mind around the idea. Seeing Mildew accept that he was wrong was barely worth what it meant to spill a drop of his blood; anything more would make as much a monster of Hiccup as had been made of the dragons in the years gone by.

“Good,” said Anna, cutting through the silence. She tilted her chin haughtily, and looped one arm through Elsa’s. Elsa quickly reached across to pull down her rucked-up sleeve. “I only met him once and I can already say that. I dread to think what he must have been like to _live_ beside.”

“Who do you think will inherit the sheep?” said Astrid.

It was absolutely a distraction, he could see that in the careful way that she was looking at him, even if her stance was nonchalant. But maybe he needed one as well. “Any males will probably go to stud,” he said. “Who knows, maybe the Ingermans can have a claim with what they were saying about the dragons. I don’t think my family would want anything of Mildew’s.”

Astrid shrugged. “Yeah, us neither. Though a rack of ribs would probably go down well.”

“Good time of year for it, I guess,” he said. “Though I don’t think that’s what’s waiting for us at home. Come on, let’s see what we can scramble up. You found your way around our pantry yet, Anna?”

“I’ve found the honey. And some jam.”

“Well, that’s a start.”

 

 

 

 

 

Lunch did not live up to being a rack of ribs, but they managed to scrounge together something respectable while Gobber or Stoick were still out. Hiccup had taken off the axe and bracers before he had even gone searching with the others, and the axe at least had disappeared from the end of the table where he had left it.

He coaxed Anna into talking about how the guards had taught her to fight, the ones that she had befriended over the years. It sounded as if it had been less to do with being a princess, and more to do with happening to live in the castle. She had never used a Viking-style sword, though, and Hiccup made a mental note to show her. Or perhaps get somebody right-handed to do so.

By mid-afternoon, he was so exhausted that he was seriously considering having a nap, however little that really fit with his new adult role. He had no idea how he had managed last summer. He wanted more to spend more of the day with Anna and Elsa, but he knew that he needed space to clear his head, somewhere to think. With some regret, he excused himself, and took to the air once again.

This time, he did not have to worry about flight patterns, or letting the others keep up. They spiralled through the air, darted after wisps of cloud, and Hiccup let himself flop in the saddle so that his back was pressed to Toothless’s. The saddle against the small of his back was not particularly comfortable, but it worked.

He closed his eyes, and let the air wash over his face. Like sweeping the morning away.

Slowly, the tension unwound in him, and once he felt his muscles relaxing he levered himself back upright and scanned around for some sort of island. There was a small one within sight, not much more than an outcrop of rock with a handful of trees, and he steered them down to a quiet landing on the shores.

“Thanks, Toothless,” Hiccup said softly, dismounting. His legs were tight, and he gave each a shake in turn. “I needed that.”

The island was so small that he could see straight across it in one go, and he sat on one of the cliff edges instead, watching the play of sunlight on the waves and the flit of seabirds in the distance. Toothless padded around, rubbed against a few trees like he was chasing some itch or another, then lay down next to Hiccup and put his chin halfway into Hiccup’s lap. In response, Hiccup rubbed his head, paying particular attention to the base of his flaps.

It was going to be strange to go back to the academy the next day as if nothing had happened. Especially since the trainees were bound to have been at the hólmganga and seen what had happened. Or, more accurately, not happened. They were supposed to be starting to look at meeting dragons, making the first introduction and getting them to trust you. Nothing difficult; the only real thing to remember was which ones wanted eye contact and which one wanted eyes averted.

He was not fully surprised when one of the silhouettes in the air quickly made itself clear as a dragon, and as it became clearer he realised that it was Stormfly. Astrid and Stormfly had a real knack for finding him. Hiccup gave Toothless a nudge.

“Go on, bud. Fire.”

Toothless obediently fired into the air, a light shot that still ricocheted in purple rings across the sky. In the distance, Astrid and Stormfly adjusted their course, and within no time at all were coming in to land behind them.

“I wondered how long it would take,” said Hiccup with a grin, looking back over his shoulder.

Astrid scoffed even as she slipped from the saddle. “Sure. Because you so frequently get followed when you go swooping off.”

His smile faded. “Yeah, and I so frequently get caught up in hólmganga.”

Caught up was not a fair way to describe it, not really, when he had been the one making the challenge. But it had all been so tumultuous that it was still almost hard to think that it was real. Hiccup turned back to the sea as Astrid came to sit beside him, their legs dangling against the rock below.

“You did your part, and Mildew made his choice,” said Astrid bluntly. “That’s over now. The question is what you’re going to do next?”

“Back to the academy, I guess,” he said, with a sigh that came from deep in his chest. “Keep teaching them. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we can introduce them to wild dragons.”

“Picked an island yet?”

That, at least, had not been too bad. “Yeah, there’s one about two hours’ flight north of Berk, at Meatlug’s pace. Mostly Nadders and Gronckles, a Nightmare or two, a colony of Terrors in the trees to watch out for. I gave it a good once-over, there’s nothing else there.”

“No Zipplebacks?”

Any attempts to have only one of the twins riding Barf and Belch had ended in disaster. Usually crashing, often fireballs. “I think we’d all do better without trying to get people who work together well on Zipplebacks,” he said.

“And I think Stoick would be annoyed if someone else got a Thunderdrum.”

“He’s not that proud of himself for it,” said Hiccup. Astrid raised an eyebrow. “All right, yes, he is pretty proud of himself for being the only one to handle a Thunderdrum. But I was more worried about the potential for property damage.”

As far as they had seen, Thunderdrums at their most destructive were still not as bad as Night Furies. To be fair, they had no idea what Toothless’s full power could be, could only gauge what they had seen against the siege towers and the Red Death, but Thornado could not have matched that. However, he was more inclined to roar at anything that startled or annoyed him, which had led to significant reinforcement of the shed early on in his residency.

“True, that probably wouldn’t go down well.”

They needed the goodwill. This year it was three trainees, four if Anna was included; next year there would be five, and Stoick still seemed convinced that adults would be interested as well. If even half of them wanted to keep dragons, then before too long the dragon population in Berk was going to start growing quickly, and Hiccup knew that he needed people on his side for when that happened and the inevitable teething problems cropped up.

Astrid punched him in the arm, light enough to just rock him in place. “Sounds like you’ve got this covered.”

“I still feel like I’m making it up as I go along,” he admitted.

“So what? Just don’t tell anyone else that. It’s not like I plan fights out in advance. Sometimes you’ve got to improvise.”

“Careful,” said Hiccup, “or I might improvise into having the rest of you run classes.”

She looked at him pointedly. “You want the _twins_ in charge of something?”

All right, so that was enough to give him pause. “Maybe having the rest of you come up with ideas for classes would be a better idea,” he said, and Astrid laughed. “But it would be nice to see other perspectives. I mean, Fishlegs has been training the Gronckles, I don’t really know much about working with them or with hatchlings, and I know that you and Stormfly are always out training.”

“We’re not _always_ out training.”

“You know what hyperbole is, and you know what I mean,” he said, leaning to bump his shoulder against hers. “You probably train more than I do.”

“Only because you don’t think of your flights as training,” said Astrid. Her voice softened, and Hiccup regarded her curiously. “I mean, you go flying, and I see you trying out your tricks and manoeuvres. You’re always fiddling with that saddle of yours. And you’re teaching him more and more words. If that’s not training–”

“Teaching him the word ‘bed’ is not something I would describe as training–”

“Exactly!” Astrid looked at him for a couple of seconds, then shook her head to herself, closing her eyes. “You are impossible,” she muttered, before looking at him again. “My point is, you two spend all your time together. Bonding, you’d probably call it. For us,” she gestured towards Stormfly with a jerk of her head, “training is a sort of bonding.”

“Bonding… yeah, all right, I’ll accept that,” he said.

He could not help feeling that Astrid would have felt what Elsa had done today was training as well, even though that had been a long way away from his intentions when he had told her to give her magic a whirl. He had just wanted her to be able to test her boundaries, feel out her strengths a little, and be less frightened of the power in her hands. The known surely had to be less frightening than the unknown. Most of life seemed to be training, as far as Astrid was concerned.

He pushed the thought away. “What’s up with your hair?” he said. It was still in its tight braid, not a wisp loose.

“Nothing to grab,” said Astrid. She ran a hand over the side of her head, as if checking that everything was still in place. “Bloody awkward to get it right, though.”

“It looks good.” It was only half a lie. It was well-done, immaculate ropes of golden hair forming attractive knot patterns. But on Astrid, he could not bring himself to like it; it made her look older, harder, _edged_ as much as the weapon in her hand.

Luckily, either his ambivalence did not show or Astrid did not recognise it. “You should put braids in your hair,” she said, reaching over to tug at a patch near his temple.”

He couldn’t help laughing in disbelief. “Yeah, all inch of it.”

“Grow it out some,” she said. Her hand moved down his scalp, leaving him aware of every fraction of an inch, to just by the nape of his neck. “It’s longer here. I bet it wouldn’t take you too long.”

“I’ll get back to you when I’m fifty on that one,” he retorted. “More like I wouldn’t get it too long.”

His hair could not even reach his shoulders properly, turning ragged and scraggly before that point. It was bad enough that even as a child he had realised it was better to give up, and have his hair short, rather than trying to grow it out like his father. Long hair was the more traditional style, certainly, but there were plenty enough people with shorter cuts that it did not look too absurd.

Undeterred and with her smile having the edge of a smirk to it, Astrid started twiddling his hair between her fingers, in a spot that he could not see. Spluttering Hiccup tried to pull away, but she caught him with her other hand and tugged him back hard enough that he fell into her, and found himself abruptly concerned with where he was putting his hands to hold himself up. He had to catch himself very quickly to make sure that it was not Astrid’s lap.

The spikes on her skirt would not have helped either.

“See? Hair tied up, nothing to get grabbed by,” she said, with a light tug on his hair.

“You’re awful.”

She released his hair to slip her hand beneath his chin instead. “Consider it payback for those terrible jokes at the hólmganga this morning.”

He opened his mouth, not sure whether it was to protest or to point out that he had been nervous when he was speaking, but Astrid kissed him again. Whether she was deliberately using it as a foolproof method to get him to be quiet, he could not even say, but it worked.

“And that?” he said, when their lips finally parted again.

Astrid ran her thumb across his lower lip. “That’s well done,” she said, voice softer. “For the hólmganga this morning.”

He kissed her back, not sure what would even be the right words for a response.


	20. Chapter 20

The academy proved to run more smoothly than Hiccup could ever have hoped. The trainees arrived on time each day, there were usually at least some of the riders around to assist him, and Gobber seemed to adapt well to talking about how to help sick dragons, rather than how to kill healthy ones. Even Stoick managed to find a day to talk about Thornado, and demonstrate a Thunderdrum’s power against the terrible army of wooden figures that had been laboriously set up inside and outside the academy.

When it came to the sparring, however, Hiccup could not help wondering whether Astrid was partially looking for a way to put the trainees back in their places. He was not sure that she had forgiven them for their laughter at the paint on the first day, even after she had told them to imagine it as blood, imagine it as the injuries they would have taken with real weapons, and then think harder about why and how much they trained.

“You may think that this year is going to be easier,” she said, walking back and forth along the front of the academy with the trainees watching her. She stopped, folded her hands behind her back, and looked straight at Speedifist. “You’d be wrong. Working with dragons,” her eyes scanned along them, “requires strength, speed and agility, something which you will doubtless discover when you first get onto the back of one. But dragon riders or not,” she drew her axe, which had been polished to a shine even in Berk’s version of sunlight, “you still need to know how to fight if you want to be Berkians. So today, we’re going to start with sparring, and _then_ we’re going to see how you’d handle a wild dragon.”

He had the nagging feeling that this was going to go horribly wrong, but held back his comments. It wasn’t a bad idea, just had the potential to go off-course with nobody to rein things in. Hiccup suspected he was going to have to do the reining.

“In this bucket,” she pointed with her axe to the bucket which she had stopped behind, “there are six names. Who’s going to pick first?”

Even that sounded like a challenge, or maybe it was just the fact that it was being said while gesturing with an axe. With a sigh, Hiccup stood up, walked over, and picked up the bucket as all four of the recruits were still looking at Astrid warily. He turned and started at the closer end of the line, which was Anna.

“Help yourself,” he said.

Anna flashed a smile, and plucked out one of the slips of paper, holding it between her index and middle fingers and flourishing it as if to demonstrate to Hiccup that she had it. He smiled in return and continued down, letting Wartihog pick his slip and immediately pull it open. Clueless pulled out two of the pieces of paper, and Hiccup took one back without even commenting, putting it back in before offering the bucket to Speedifist to make her selection.  That finished, he returned to the back of the academy and put the bucket by the wall, then scooped out the last pieces of paper out of curiosity as Astrid continued speaking.

“We have bought up a selection of weapons. If you have a wish to retrieve one of your own, we can put you after the others.”

Hiccup unfolded the last pieces of paper, to find that one bore Ruffnut’s name, and the other Snotlout’s. A worrying sense of numbers weighed on him, because Tuffnut’s name would mean that Barf and Belch were still going to be taking part, but Astrid had been quite certain that everyone would be facing a dragon.

He gave the back of Astrid’s head a frustrated look.

“So!” Astrid swung her axe back onto her shoulder. “Who have you got?”

“I’ve got you!” said Anna, still looking excited. Hiccup wondered whether it was still treason if he let the Queen of Arendelle get into fights with random people from Berk.

Speedifist folded her paper neatly back up again. “Fishlegs,” she said, though her eyes were on Meatlug.

“Hiccup,” said Wartihog. He looked a little smug, which to be fair Hiccup completely understood. Not much over a year ago, Wartihog would have been able to beat Hiccup in a fight just as surely as almost any other person on Berk. Hiccup was still not entirely sure he would bet against that happening now. But Astrid had also mentioned dragons, and there was still a sliver of Hiccup that was vindicated that Toothless would certainly not be losing a fight.

“So that means Clueless has got Tuffnut,” said Astrid. Clueless looked up from trying to get the last fold of the paper open.

Hiccup scanned the academy to make sure there was nothing breakable in the vicinity. Clueless wasn’t great at figuring things out, but once he had learnt something it stuck faster than a bog, and he could scrap with the best of them. He and Tuffnut would probably have a grand time.

“Tuffnut, Clueless, you’re up first,” said Astrid. “What weapons are you after?”

“Eh, whatever’s free,” Tuffnut shrugged.

It was probably going to be best to step out of the way of this one, Hiccup decided. Possibly outside the academy altogether.

 

 

 

 

 

It did not take long for Tuffnut and Clueless to end up rolling around on the floor, cheerfully exchanging punches and kicks, while Ruffnut alternately cheered them on and asked Astrid, repeatedly, whether she could join in. To Astrid’s credit, she kept calm about saying no, not even taking her eyes off the scrapping pile of dragon rider and trainee until Clueless managed to get Tuffnut pinned face-first to the ground.

“Not bad,” said Astrid, wandering over. “I’ll give you some pointers later. You can let him go, now,” she added, pointedly. Clueless looked up with wide eyes. “Get off him.”

When Clueless still did not respond, Astrid rolled her eyes, grabbed his shoulder and hauled him to his feet and off Tuffnut. Tuffnut spat out some dust as he rolled over onto his back.

“Wartihog! Hiccup!”

“Wait, what?” Hiccup straightened up from where he had been leaning in the doorway, as far away as he could justifiably get. “Now?”

“Did you think I meant next moon?” said Astrid.

Wartihog sniggered.

“Fine, where’s that seax?” Hiccup sighed. He probably should have known what Astrid was planning from the moment that he had seen the seax among the weapons; it was a blade that none of the others would use

He picked it up, watching from the corner of his eye as Wartihog selected a longsword. Well, this was going to be another one of those days. Deciding that it was going to be worth having a shield for this one as well, Hiccup turned in that direction, and did not expect to find Elsa already reaching into the shields to produce the lighter one that he always used. Even if it was only to spar with Wartlout, he was more than a little touched, and smiled as she passed it to him.

“Thanks.”

“Left hand to left hand,” she said, with a wry smile. Hiccup suspected that Anna had said something that made Elsa realise that was more unusual.

“That’s true,” Astrid said, sounding all too pleased with herself. “Wartihog, you’ve probably not fought someone left-handed before. It makes sparring more interesting.”

“Oh, is that why you wanted to spar with me over winter?” said Hiccup, eyebrows raised as he got a good grip on his shield and took up position in the centre of the academy. Astrid was smirking. “Good to know that I make sparring interesting.”

Wartihog had picked up one of the leather-fronted shields. They were sturdier, sure, but not necessary when sparring like this, and Hiccup wondered whether Astrid had put it there for that exact reason. Although he was a year younger, Wartihog was already as tall as Hiccup, and considerably more heavily built, and he was holding the longsword like it was nothing.

“You know,” he said to Wartihog, “considering how the last days have been for me and fighting, I’m not sure that–”

The sword slashed straight towards him, and Hiccup quickly stepped sideways, only just managing to draw the seax as the blade whistled downwards. He caught the blow from Wartihog’s shield on his own, swaying to absorb the blow, and cut upwards in return. His blade slid along the underside of Wartihog’s bracer, a light blow on the stiff leather, and Wartihog grunted with frustration.

“First strike to Hiccup,” said Astrid.

Wartihog looked outraged. “What?!”

“If he’d actually tried to hurt you, you’d have just had your wrist slashed open. Ever seen how much an arm can bleed?” said Astrid.

“I’m wearing bracers!”

While Wartihog was protesting, Hiccup took the opportunity to scoop round with his shield, knocking Wartihog’s sword aside and opening up his back. He adjusted the grip on his seax to protect his knuckles, and landed a punch in the centre of Wartihog’s back.

“Second strike to Hiccup.”

This time, wisely, Wartihog did not argue. Scowling at Hiccup, he lashed out with his sword, and Hiccup barely got his shield in the way in time. It still rattled his arm. Wartihog pressed on, cutting again and again, and Hiccup struggled to defend on his sword side. When he twisted his body to take the blow on his shield, he realised too late that he was opening up his side again, a bad habit that Stoick had tried over the years to get him to stop.

The edge of Wartihog’s shield slammed into his ribs, knocking the breath from his lungs. That was going to bruise. Hiccup got the edge of his own shield into Wartihog’s and rolled the younger boy’s stance open, slashing upwards and across, and Wartihog had to jump backwards out of the way of it.

“Wartihog gets the third strike,” said Astrid.

He would have said that it was nice to know that she at least was enjoying herself, but he didn’t have the breath to spare as Wartihog charged against him, shield-first, and even though Hiccup managed to take it on his shield he was pushed back several paces, right foot slipping wildly and only his left managing to get any traction on the hard-packed floor. Grunting, Hiccup put his shoulder behind the shield, but he could feel that he did not have anything like the strength for it, and before he could be knocked over completely he turned sideways, dragging Wartihog through, and gave one last shove to send him staggering away instead.

Wartihog spun to face Hiccup again, but this time there was uncertainty to his scowl, a question in his eyes. Only a year ago, he would have been able to beat Hiccup easily, and both of them knew it. Hiccup could feel a swell of surprise as well, but he did not have time to think on it, not before Wartihog pressed in with a slash again and Hiccup had to step away.

For years, Hiccup had been frustrated at being left-handed, at how it made it harder for him to even start learning to fight. In the forge, it hadn’t been such a problem; Gobber was right-handed, but so often used the tools of his left hand that he might as well have been able to use either. A sword did not care which hand you held the hammer in, he would say. But now, watching Wartihog’s frustration, he had to admit that when facing other people, it might actually help. Or, at least, confuse them a little.

They moved back and forth across the academy floor, the fight far looser and more mobile than Tuffnut and Clueless’s brawl had been. Hiccup could feel the start of an ache in his shoulder as he slashed, dodged and wove, from the weight of the shield as well as the blows that he was taking on it, and he had fewer opportunities to slash or stab with his shorter seax.

But each time that Wartihog swung, Hiccup could see it becoming a little weaker. A little lower. Eventually, Hiccup managed to get his shield in beneath Wartihog’s, throw them both upwards, and dropped his seax to the ground as he stepped in and jabbed instead, with his fingers pressed into a point, at the point just below Wartihog’s armpit.

“And… _dead_ ,” Astrid announced.

“What? It’s his _hand_!”

“And if it were a blade, you’d be dead,” said Hiccup, “but I don’t feel like that would make me too popular.”

He saw the deepening scowl, and the shift in Wartihog’s body, before Wartihog even dropped his sword and swung round in a punch. Hiccup ducked, and Wartihog’s fist hit Hiccup’s raised shield so hard that it was knocked out of his hand and to the floor, and both of them staggered apart.

“ _Thor_!” snapped Wartihog, cradling his fist to his chest. He turned away, so that none of them could see his expression.

Somehow, Hiccup doubted that he would be welcomed if he tried to offer any comfort. “Put it in cold water,” he said instead, businesslike, as he picked up his shield and seax and turned back to Astrid, sweeping an arm to encompass the arena. “All yours.”

“Fishlegs?” she looked over at him. “Speedifist? You want to go next?”

Fishlegs did not look too convinced, but Speedifist perked up at the mention of her name and strode towards the spread of weapons. Rolling his sore shoulder, Hiccup retired to the edge of the academy, leaning on the wall beside Elsa.

“That was so _cool_ ,” said Anna, leaning around from Elsa’s other side. “When did you get so much better?”

Of course, they had more played than sparred, and Anna had been able to knock him on his rear nine times out of ten. Hiccup breathed deeply as he put down his sword and seax, but resolutely did not pant for air. “I’m not that good,” he said. “And it was a winter of training with my father.”

“You’re better than you used to be,” said Anna breezily.

“Thanks,” Hiccup said. He rubbed his right shoulder, then shifted down to gingerly press against his side instead. “I think.”

“Are you all right?” said Elsa, voice low. When she put her hand on his right shoulder as well, the cold was really quite nice.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Probably have some nice bruises on my ribs,” he admitted. “You can keep your hand there, though, that helps.”

“Ooh, you can do this thing,” said Anna, “where you put some beans in a sock, and you heat them by the fire, and then you can use it like a warm compress. It’s really nice.”

“Might try that, yeah.”

Carefully, he straightened up and watched as Fishlegs and Speedifist faced off cross the academy. To judge by the look on Fishlegs’s face, he did not want to drag this out in the way that Hiccup had, pride or otherwise. Fishlegs was tall enough, strong enough, that he did not have to prove himself in the way that Hiccup did. Being able to carry a sheep under each arm made up for a lot of things.

Whether or not Speedifist had figured that out, she fought very precisely, shield in one hand and axe in the other. She had chosen a plain axe, practical, the sort that could be used for cutting wood as much as it could be used for fighting, and tested Fishlegs’s defences with carefully-placed slashes and cuts. Fishlegs was too timid to really attack in return, and Speedifist easily blocked his blows with her shield or turned them aside with a hook of her axe.

“Is Astrid going to be that good?” said Anna, starting to sound a little more concerned.

There really wasn’t much point lying. “She’s better,” said Hiccup flatly. “Better than anyone our age. Better than most of the adults.”

Anna winced as Speedifist hooked her axe around Fishlegs’s ankle and, with one clean pull, knocked him to the ground. “I get the feeling I might need those beans myself.”

He gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “Borrow my shield, if you want. It’s lighter than some of the others. Astrid will at least respect you for it. And if all else fails, just think that it will be over quickly.”

She punched him in the shoulder. He probably deserved that one.

 

 

 

 

 

Anna did, at least, accept the lighter shield. She also went for the more slender of the longswords, one which borrowed a little from the Arendellen style but kept the edges as well as the tip suitable for cutting, and faced Astrid without fear but, to judge by how serious she was being, at least an appropriate amount of caution. She kept on her toes, which was good, but almost bounced in place and took a lot of small steps and shifts, while Astrid kept her movement to a minimum and bent her knees to keep her balance low.

“This is needed?” said Elsa. She had one arm wrapped around her chest, her other fist pressed to her lips.

“It’ll be fine,” Hiccup said. When he rubbed her upper arm, she flinched slightly, but neither pulled away nor stopped looking at Anna. “Astrid won’t hurt her. All that we’ve managed is a few bruises.”

It did not seem to be much comfort to Elsa as Astrid, with a battlecry that made Anna looked startled, bought down her first punishing slash of an attack. Anna parried it away clumsily, but then her expression became more determined and she attacked in return, a powerful cut that Astrid only just caught on her shield. Astrid looked astonished.

“Looks like Anna’s got better as well,” he added.

Before Astrid could recover herself, Anna struck again, and though Astrid turned away this one with her axe there was a glint of enjoyment in her eye and she bounced back into the fray. Hiccup would admit to being surprised as Anna kept up, matching Astrid blow for blow, and with only grunts rather than yells of effort as she did so. As Astrid’s axe glanced off Anna’s shield and almost caught her shoulder, Elsa winced, and soon she was watching her younger sister through her fingers as Anna and Astrid gleefully dodged back and forth, steel ringing on steel.

The sword was knocked from Anna’s hold, and Astrid grinned wickedly, but Anna got both arms behind her shield and took the next blow as well as any Viking would.

“It’s over, right?” Elsa said.

Hiccup winced as Anna took the opportunity to hit Astrid cleanly in the face with her shield. Surely _that_ had not been learnt from the Arendellen guards. “It’s sort of over when one of them stops…”

“Kick her in the kneecaps!” said Tuffnut, grinning wildly. Ruffnut nodded along. “Kick her in the kneecaps!”

Hiccup had no idea which one of them he was talking to. Then again, knowing the twins they probably didn’t much care either. As it was, Astrid slammed her shield into Anna’s, then hooked her axe behind one knee and pulled Anna straight to the ground.

Unlike Fishlegs, Anna did not give up. She swung with her shield; Astrid jumped clean over it, and went to use the butt of her axe to hit Anna in the stomach. Taking the hit with a grunt, Anna lunged upwards, and grabbed Astrid’s wrist to haul her down to the ground as well. Both shields were lost in the tumble, but Astrid kept hold of her axe, and it slammed into the ground next to Anna’s head.

“I think this has gone on long enough,” Hiccup muttered. He pushed upright and started towards them as Anna slammed her palm into Astrid’s face to turn her head aside. Astrid responded with grabbing Anna’s forearm and twisting, fast and hard enough for Anna to yelp. “All right, all right!” He clapped his hands. “Thank you both!”

Astrid pinned Anna’s arm to the ground, and pointed the axe at her throat. Sparring or not, that was enough, and Hiccup raised his voice further.

“Hey! We’re done!”

Finally, they broke apart, and Astrid burst out laughing as she got to her feet and reached a hand back down to Anna. Without a second’s hesitation, Anna took it, and let herself be hauled back up.

“A punch would have been better than that slap,” said Astrid, gesturing to her own face. “Or aim for the bridge of the nose.”

“That was _fun_ ,” said Anna breathlessly. “Do you do that regularly?”

She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, and left a smear of blood behind. As she caught sight of her hand, she pulled a face. “Damn it.”

“And you should wash that out immediately,” said Hiccup, glancing over it. It was only a small cut, and apparently neither of them had spotted it or Astrid probably would have called off the bout herself. “Or Elsa will have my head.”

Anna laughed, but did look round at her sister sheepishly, and tried to rub her forehead with the other hand at the same time. Something told Hiccup that they were going to need to have some words about appropriate training techniques.

 

 

 

 

 

Somehow, the trainees facing off against the dragons resulted in less injury than them facing off against the dragon riders. Speedifist was only knocked over by Meatlug, who promptly looked round as if to check that this strange human was all right, and Anna had the sense to grab the largest shield available and spend a lot of her time sheltering behind it. Leaving Tuffnut on his own to try to direct Barf and Belch had only led to Tuffnut, and not Clueless, being burned, and he had airily shrugged it off until Hiccup had forcibly put some ice on it and sent him home. Wartihog managed the least time of all before having his shield knocked away by a pinpoint blast from Toothless, then his legs swept from under him by one flick of the tail.

“Look on the bright side,” Hiccup had heard Speedifist saying, “you faced a Night Fury and walked away.”

There weren’t exactly many people who could say that, and Wartihog did indeed perk up. It probably helped that he didn’t see Speedifist’s shake of her head as soon as his back was turned. She had a point; he was surprisingly predictable.

In the end, the most impressive injury was probably Astrid’s, a bruise on her cheekbone extending up and showing definite signs of being a black eye. She still laughed when she said that she hadn’t expected so much fire from a _prissy_ Arendellen, her tone saying the word _princess_ as clear as day.

He made sure that they all had turns in riding each of the dragons – save Barf and Belch, who this time refused to even take off without both of the twins in their saddles. At Anna’s suggestion, followed by Anna’s request and eventually Anna’s pleading look, Hiccup saw to it that Toothless was among them. It meant repeated trips with people clinging to him, and more than a few screams, but in the end it was worth it when he saw the awed looks on their faces, the way that they tentatively raised their hands to feel the air rolling over them.

It was amazing, Hiccup could not help thinking, how everyone felt the same amazement sooner or later. Hiccup wondered whether it was just as weightless, just as enveloping, as it had been for him.

Finally, they were allowed to fly dragons by themselves. Meatlug first, inside the academy, and once they were more secure Stormfly and Hookfang waited outside. Snotlout fussed like an anxious parent, and shouted at Clueless when he flew too far from the academy. Astrid, the last of her black eye still fading, took the opportunity to point out every tiny flaw with everyone’s technique, resulting in Anna falling off Stormfly trying to correct too many things at once.

It was a long few days.

For the most part, Hiccup did not have time to feel nervous again until it came to the day before they were flying out to meet with wild dragons. Apparently running the academy was enough to keep his mind more than busy.

He lingered outside that evening, watching the sky very slowly grow dim, until he saw Stoick making his way up to the house carrying an entire wheel of cheese. About that, Hiccup knew better than to ask.

“Hiccup,” said Stoick, surprise in his voice. “Is everything all right?”

“I’m fine.” He waved his hand vaguely. “Just wanted to get some fresh air. Anna is introducing Elsa to the idea of ‘packing’. It is… not going well.”

“You’ve got tents, though?”

“Yeah, we’ve got all the important things sorted.” Small tents, not the large ones like they had taken to Arendelle, but they would do. “And the weather looks to be holding.” Hiccup rubbed the side of his neck, where it had been sore all day.

“It gets easier, leading expeditions,” said Stoick.

A nervous laugh burst from him. “Expedition? It’s not an _expedition_.”

“No, but I’m guessing it feels like one,” Stoick said pointedly. To that, Hiccup did not have a good response. “And if all else fails, you can bring everyone home.”

It wasn’t the best of back-up plans, but at least it was a back-up plan. Hiccup nodded. “We’ve been out a few times to check out the dragons. It looks like they’re all adults, so there’s no hatchlings to get protective over. And we took fish, so they’re not completely wild any more.”

He didn’t want other first meetings to be like the one that he and Toothless went through. Pain and desperation and fear, and not knowing what the hell he was supposed to do to keep himself – never mind the dragon – safe. Of the dragons on Berk, only Thornado, and the female Nightmare who lived on the edge of the village with her still-growing hatchlings, had met with humans peacefully.

“Did you decide on whether to take that female Nightmare with you?” asked Stoick.

“She’s not coming.” Hiccup had argued with himself over that for days. “It’s better if she stays here, takes care of all of the hatchlings. None of them are really big enough to make this long a flight. Not sure that Astrid’s parents would appreciate having to look after three Nadders as well as Smokey.”

Stoick chuckled. “Have you checked with her whether she wants to babysit?”

“Honestly, I was going to rely on dropping off all of the hatchlings and running. Well, flying.” Not a dignified plan, but it had the benefit of simplicity at least. “You’re sure that you’re fine with this, Dad?” Hiccup looked at his father almost fearfully, feeling suddenly very small and with a very great weight on his shoulders. “Us all going for several days? I mean, with what happened in Arendelle, and the Outcasts – I mean, we’re in the height of the sailing season, if they’re going to do anything it has to be now – and I’m thinking maybe we should just bring some dragons here, but that’s not going to be popular, and–”

“ _Hiccup_ ,” said Stoick, weary. He shook his head as Hiccup looked up, but there was still a faint smile playing about his lips. “Everything with be fine. What has happened with Toothless has shown one thing very clearly: you can trust your gut.” With his free hand, he patted Hiccup’s side. “Even if there isn’t too much of it.”

It was rare enough these days for Hiccup to make jests about weight; for his father to do it was enough to completely take the words out of Hiccup’s mouth for a good few seconds. “Um… thanks?” he eventually managed.

Once again, Stoick chuckled. “You’ll get there. Just make sure that you bring everyone back in one piece each, aye?”

“I make no promises with the twins.”


	21. Chapter 21

When all was said and done, Hiccup was just relieved that seeing them off did not turn into too much of a spectacle. He kept it early, and quiet, and suspected that most of the riders, never mind the trainees, were still half-asleep as he got them into place and on their way. He did not want anyone else trying to ride on Barf and Belch, not sure whether it would hurt their necks after some distance, and so Anna and Elsa were both on Meatlug’s back, while Fishlegs looked more bewildered than ever and Snotlout almost audibly sulked. Astrid was sharing with Speedifist, Snotlout with Wartihog, and Hiccup had Clueless sitting in front of him, where he could be firmly clipped in to the safety harness.

He pushed them high, deliberately, up where the air was cold enough to be uncomfortable if they had not dressed warmly in the way that he had warned them too. Even Anna had not particularly believed him, but Elsa had fussed over her and insisted she wear long sleeves that could be tucked into gloves and carried a cloak with her. Considering Clueless had his own bare hands stuffed in his armpits, Hiccup imagined she became grateful for it quickly enough.

The island that he had chosen was not all that far away, close enough that in an emergency either Toothless or Stormfly could get someone back to Berk quickly, but with plenty of distance to put them over the horizon and make it feel like _somewhere else_. The sun was getting high in the sky by the time that they landed, at which point Clueless promptly forgot about the safety harness and fell off face-first, and Anna managed about two steps before she fell over.

Hiccup dismounted, unclipped Clueless, and pulled him to his feet. “All right, everyone, welcome to your base for the next couple of days. Although the academy is largely about dragons, it is not entirely so, and the first thing that I’m going to do is ask you all what you think you should be doing next.”

There was a dumbfounded silence. Even Astrid looked shocked, and Hiccup did feel a pang of guilt for not telling her this was coming, but the entire idea had been for it to be a surprise.

“Establish–” Astrid started.

“No! No,” he made sure to catch her eye as he held out a hand to stop her, and she still looked annoyed by it. “I want the trainees to say it. Go on,” he gestured vaguely to them all. “Put your heads together and see what you can come up with.”

The four of them glanced at each other uncertainly, and engaged in a sort of synchronised sidling that eventually bought them all roughly shoulder-to-shoulder. Hiccup wandered to within hearing distance, scratching his chin, but stood pointedly away from them and waited for the silence between them to break.

“So… does that mean going and looking for the dragons?” said Anna. She gestured them a little closer, and they formed a sort of huddle. She was probably not intentionally using her time as Queen to lead them, but Hiccup suspected it was not going away any time soon. “We can’t meet them if we don’t find them.”

“He hasn’t told us anything about the island,” said Wartihog. “We should scout it generally.”

“Can I get a drink?” said Clueless.

“We need to establish a base in general,” Speedifist started saying, but Anna’s head popped up from the group as she looked over at Hiccup.

“Hiccup,” Anna said, “you’re basically like a scout, right? What did you see?”

It was his father who had said that somebody might come out with that question, and at the time Hiccup had thought it would be Speedifist. They had debated how he should answer. “Good point, Anna,” he said, going with his father’s stance. Stoick had made a convincing explanation of it. “There’s no point doing the scouting twice. This island is pretty small, maybe four miles long by three miles at its widest. The larger island to the north is visible in good weather, but not in rain. This one shaped roughly like a wynn, with a bulge to the north-eastern. Mostly deciduous forest, with some pines on the north-west where there’s higher ground.”

“And animals? Dragons?” said Speedifist, catching on quickly.

“There are Gronckles and Nadders in small groups along the interior and the eastern coast, with fewer on the western,” said Hiccup. “That might be because it’s more exposed, it might be that the limestone cliffs disagree with them. As Fishlegs has noted,” he nodded to Fishlegs and Meatlug, “at least some Gronckles don’t react well to limestone.  There is at least one flock of Terrors in the inland area, and at least two – though there might be three, from the roaring I’ve heard – Nightmares that seem to have their own separate territories. I didn’t see any hatchlings, though there were some sub-adults. There are far fewer dragons on the larger island, which is why we’re here instead.”

Clueless stood on the tips of his toes to look over Anna’s shoulder. “Can I get a drink? Where’s the water?” he said.

Well, at least he had something of a sense of priority, Hiccup supposed. “There are several small streams, and a springline to the base of the hills in the north-west.”

“But the dragons probably know about them as well,” said Speedifist. Hiccup nodded; dragons were certainly that intelligent, even if he hadn’t exactly asked around. “So we need to take that into account when choosing a campsite.”

“So, what?” said Wartihog. “We can fly and look for one, right? We don’t have to walk it?”

“We need one with enough landing area for a dragon with a sixty-foot wingspan,” Speedifist pointed out, with a wave to Hookfang. He was very attentively licking the underside of his wing. “That’s got to narrow it down.”

“Unless,” said Astrid, frustration visible in the set of her brow as well as audible in her voice, “Hiccup has already _seen_ the best campsite on the island, and is now just dragging this out to see whether you guys are smart enough to ask him, or us, or both.” She folded her arms, planted her weight firmly on one foot, and cocked her head as she looked flatly at Hiccup. Slowly, the trainees looked from her, to furtive glances at each other, to him.

Nobody else seemed to have minded being given some peace and quiet while the trainees figured things out, but he supposed he could chalk it up to a lesson for all of them. “Yes,” said Hiccup, “I have seen a good place. Which is part of why scouting can be so useful, especially,” he patted Toothless’s neck, “now that we have dragons which let us scout from the air more quickly and thoroughly than we ever could from the ground. And as Astrid said,” he gave her a look which he hoped communicated that the butting in had not been wholly appreciated and he would talk to her later about it, “it never hurts to ask the other people around you as well. I never told you that you couldn’t ask the others,” he encompassed them with a wave of his hand. “just told them not to answer first.”

“So?” said Wartihog. “Where’s this campsite?”

“Can I get something to drink there?” said Clueless.

He sighed. “Come on, it’s not far from here. Let’s go.”

 

 

 

 

 

“All right,” admitted Astrid. “It is a pretty good site.”

There was enough open ground for the tents, a landing area for the dragons created by a flat rocky outcrop that had prevented trees from growing, and caves in case the local weather decided to become truly cruel. A stream exited one of the smaller caves; it tasted good and even after Clueless had drunk from it a few hours ago without waiting to boil it, it had not done him any harm. Speedifist was showing Anna how to finish pegging out the mid-sized tent that had been bought for the women, while Snotlout and Wartihog were trying to untie Tuffnut from the guy ropes of the men’s.

“Thank you,” he replied, meaning it. “That means a lot to me.”

She rolled her eyes as she turned to look at him. “All right, where’s the hatchet?”

“What?”

“That was the honey. Where’s the hatchet?”

He frowned at her for a clear few seconds, then shook his head. “I really have no clue what you’re talking about. But if you mean why did I pull you aside…” he took a deep breath. “We’re here to teach them to be dragon riders, Astrid. And they can’t learn if we’re doing everything for them.”

“The knowledge isn’t going to magically spring into their heads,” she said, flicking her fingers outwards at the level of her ear.

“You’re good at this,” said Hiccup. “You’re – you’re _great_ at this. And I get that it must be frustrating to see the answer, and have it seem so easy to you, when they can’t get it. But they really need to come up with this themselves, and having to flat-out tell them should be the last situation.”

“You mean like all those times we’ve stood at the front of the arena and flat-out told them?” she raised her eyebrows.

He probably should have suspected that it would go like this. “Firstly, that’s about dragons, whereas this is stuff that they probably already _do_ know, from their parents and their siblings and just from living on Berk. And secondly, as much as possible we _have_ had them discovering things about the dragons, and trying to think. You were the one who got them to experiment with shot limits and range.”

“So you’re saying that we should let them do the work twice?”

“For the next few days? Yes. Because personally I’d rather do the work twice now, when it’s not important, than have them out in the field facing a wild dragon and need help then. We’re not taking bodies back to Berk.”

The words came out sharper than he had meant them, and even Astrid looked momentarily shocked before her lips pressed together again. “I understand,” she said, voice clipped. It was probably the closest thing to an apology that he would get on the matter, but from the look in her eyes he was fairly sure that she really did get it.

“Not everyone’s as good at this as you are, Astrid,” he said, more gently, by way of his own apology.

This time, the shake of her head was accompanied with the ghost of a smile, and she punched him lightly on the shoulder. “You are going way too heavy on the honey,” she said.

With a smile, he went to start people on putting up the third tent. It was the largest, meant for all of them to be able to eat in, plan their days, even take shelter in when there was light rain. Heavier rain would probably call for the caves, but then again, they were Vikings. As long as they kept their packs and their spare clothes off the ground and dry, they would be fine.

And once they were up – he could not help a slight thrill of excitement at the thought – they would be able to go and look for dragons.

 

 

 

 

 

They set off on foot; Hiccup would have left the dragons behind altogether, the better to not disturb the wild dragons, but he had never taken a large group out at the same time and was not sure how the dragons would react. If all else failed, he wanted a way out quickly. He got the twins and Fishlegs to hang back a hundred yards or so, however, with all of the dragons apart from Toothless, while the rest of them stuck together and made their way in the general direction of the dragon nests.

“What dragon do you think you’re gonna get?” said Wartihog. Whatever vague animosity he might have been holding towards Hiccup seemed to have withered away completely as the prospect of meeting his own dragon came closer to being a reality.

“Dunno,” Clueless said. “I like Toothless.”

“He’s a _Night Fury_ ,” said Wartihog. “You’re not going to get one of those.”

“I like all of them. Just Toothless especially.”

Hiccup suspected that Clueless would be happy whatever dragon he was able to befriend, but he had not really shown any interest in making it a lasting relationship or becoming a dragon rider. Speedifist had been interested from the beginning, and it sounded as if Wartihog had rather come round to the idea over time. What they would do if Anna wanted a dragon, Hiccup had no idea, because the house was getting somewhat over-full as it was, and Thornado already took up most of the woodshed.

That was, of course, besides the issue of the Queen of Arendelle having a dragon. Berk was having difficulty enough adjusting; Hiccup could not see Arendelle taking kindly to the idea any time soon.

Astrid, on point, stopped abruptly. Her centre of gravity dropped slightly, and she raised a hand beside her, flat to them. As they had agreed, everyone stopped, even if Hiccup had to put out an arm to stop Clueless from tripping over himself. Astrid took a few more careful steps forwards, between the trees, then turned and smiled at them. It was the most glad that Hiccup had seen her look since they left Berk.

‘Nadders, Gronckles,’ she mouthed to Hiccup.

“All right, everyone,” he said quietly. “We’ve got Nadders and Gronckles out there, so remember your lessons. Nadders don’t like eye contact, Gronckles don’t mind either way. Leave your weapons with Astrid and Snotlout; Elsa and I will come with you into the flock.”

Astrid made sure to take not just weapons, but helmets and sharp pauldrons, from everyone as they walked passed. Hiccup half-expected her to pat everyone down to make sure that they were clear. Even he handed over his Gronckle iron knife, and as he stepped up to the edge of the trees he concentrated on the feel of his vest on his shoulders and caught Elsa’s eye. She looked more nervous than the trainees, but nodded.

He stepped out first. It was a larger clearing than he had been expecting, and over a dozen dragons looked back at him, more curiously than anything else. A granite outcrop had the distinctive claw- and teeth-marks of Gronckles all over it, and a springhead turned into a shallow steam that disappeared into the trees to their right. All of the dragons looked round as they came entered, and a few hunkered down, but there were no bared teeth or raised tails. It looked as if the occasional gifts of fish from Hiccup had been enough to break the ice.

He waved for the trainees to go ahead, but they all seemed frozen in place on the edge of the trees. Speedifist looked green around the gills. Finally, it was Anna who took the first delicate step forwards, then a second, and though one of the Nadders cocked their head there was no movement towards her. The closest dragon to the trees was a Gronckle, larger than the others, with one cloudy eye and a scar across its snout. It watched Anna approach, turning its head to its good side, until she stood only a few feet away, breathing heavily, and reached out a shaking hand towards it.

It eyed her up, snorted derisively, and dropped its head back to the ground again.

Wartihog laughed nervously, and Hiccup made himself keep a neutral face even though he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. With a faint confused shrug, Anna turned back to them, and Hiccup nodded towards the dragon again for lack of any better option.

Squaring her shoulders, Anna stepped closer and reached out her hand again. The dragon watched her closely as she took another step, until her hand was only a foot or so away from its snout.

It raised its head, and sniffed her hand. Anna’s eyes fluttered closed, squeezed tight for a moment, then snapped open again as she clearly decided that being able to see was the better option right now. The Gronckle sniffed her thoroughly then reached out and gave her hand a long, thorough lick, leaving it dripping with spit.

Anna did not even seem to notice as a smile gradually spread across her face, eyes lighting up. She stroked the Gronckle’s nose, tentatively at first then, as it huffed and stayed still for her, more quickly and confidently. Crouching down, she set to scratching it under the chin, and giggled when it raised its jaw to allow her better access.

“There you go,” said Hiccup. “Befriending a wild dragon. Who else wants to go?”

With caution written across his features, Wartihog started shuffling towards the nearest Nadder, and Clueless looked around with wide eyes before setting his gaze on a smaller Gronckle that was the darkest shade of blue Hiccup had yet seen. In the right lighting, it might just look black, he supposed. Wartihog’s posture was entirely wrong, all hunched shoulders and bowed head, arm stretched out taut and palm hard in its flatness, but his eyes were squeezed closed and the Nadder looked more confused than anything else. The dark blue Gronckle pattered over to Clueless before it was even necessary to offer a hand.

But Speedifist was still locked in place, staring at the dragons in front of her. The colour had drained from her cheeks, her eyes were wide, and her hands had curled into fists at her side. Hiccup doubted that was anger.

“Speedifist?” he said gently, stepping over.

“I can’t do it,” she said, all in a rush. Her voice was tight and high. “I can’t do it. There’s too many. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“It’s all right,” said Hiccup. This had not been in his plans. This had not even been in his imagination. He looked at Elsa desperately, but she was still watching the other trainees; that was probably a good thing. “You don’t have to do this now. It can wait until tomorrow, or the day after, or it can wait until next year if you need to.

“I can’t do it,” she said again, and this time there was a little bit more of a whimper in her voice.

“You can, but you don’t _have_ to,” he said. Of course it was different, a flock of wild dragons – or nearly wild, but they did not know that – compared to the hatchlings or to Toothless or the others, of course it would be harder. All of them had frozen at first, and it was not until Anna had approached the first Gronckle that Wartihog or Clueless had even seemed able to move their feet.

Hiccup looked at Elsa again, and this time caught her eyes. She glanced over them, her eyes clearly flickering over Speedifist’s posture, and then she walked over and carefully stepped into the girl’s view. Speedifist flinched all the same.

“They do not want to hurt you,” said Elsa softly. Hiccup was not sure what he had been expecting, but it was certainly not that, and he gave her a look that was one step from bewilderment. “Nor to fight. They just want peace.”

There was hesitance in Elsa’s hand as she raised it to Speedifist’s bicep, and with a brush of Elsa’s fingers Speedifist jerked her arm up and across her chest, finally tearing her eyes away from the dragons to look at Elsa, wide and wild. Well, that was more than Hiccup had managed, he supposed. He glanced over the other trainees to make sure that they were all right; the boys were both still greeting the same dragons, while Anna had moved on to a second one by now, the old Gronckle still watching her.

“You met Meatlug,” said Hiccup softly. “You were strangers to each other, as well.” He picked the word deliberately, knowing how human it was. “And now these guys are just… new strangers. How about one that someone else has already introduced themselves to?”

The old Gronckle that Anna had approached was a little apart from the others, lying down with its head on its forelegs. As Hiccup looked up, it shifted slightly, onto its side more than its belly. Even with a Gronckle’s tough hide, that was a more vulnerable position, and he could see that it was comfortable around them.  Speedifist nodded jerkily, and Hiccup gently took hold of her hand to lead her towards the Gronckle. As they drew closer, it raised its head and sniffed, and Speedifist almost shied back again.

“Dragon nip, Elsa,” said Hiccup, not even needing to ask. She reached into her top and pulled out a tightly-closed leather bag, but from the way that more than a few of the dragons looked around it was not tightly sealed enough. Hiccup’s first thought was to chuck it back over to the trees, but then he handed it to Speedifist instead. “Go on,” he said. “This’ll definitely make you friends around here.”

She clutched it in her free hand, breathing hard and still looking a little as if she might throw up were she to open her mouth, and Hiccup carefully let go of her as she shuffled towards the Gronckle. Still a few feet away, she grabbed a handful of dragon nip out of the bag and tossed it in the Grocnkle’s general direction. It scattered a little, looser now that it had started to dry out, but mostly landed on the ground in front of the dragon.

It leant forward, sniffed, and then dragged its tongue across the ground, all while she watched with wide eyes and tense posture. As it slurped at stray pieces, however, she cautiously reached for a second handful, and threw it with somewhat better aim and less scattering than the first. The Gronckle chuffed, a deep rough ripple of a sound, and Speedifist crouched down where she could look at it more closely before reaching out one arm.

Her outstretched fingers barely even came close enough, but the Gronckle raised its nose to brush against them, and chuffed again. Finally, Hiccup felt himself relax again.

“Well,” he said quietly to Elsa, “that was interesting.”

She smiled wryly, then glanced out across the clearing again. As fast as if she had been burnt, the smile vanished, and fear lit in her eyes. “Anna?” she said, voice slightly raised.

He had not thought that Anna would be the one to do something foolish. Hiccup looked up as well, eyes scanning the still-quiet clearing for what action might have made Elsa look so concerned, but for a moment could not see what it was. Then he blinked, and realised that Anna was no longer in the clearing at all.

Elsa looked around as if she was expecting the sight before her to suddenly change, eyes widening, and walked hurriedly in the direction that Anna had last been. She did not even glance at the dragons that she walked past on the way, though they looked at her curiously and some sniffed the air as she passed. “Anna?”

That time, there was a definite edge of fear to her voice, and Hiccup was not sure whether or not it was luck that a cooler breeze swept through at that moment. “Elsa, it’s all right,” he said firmly. “She’ll be nearby.”

Probably just going to relieve herself, he thought, or seeing something interesting in the trees. It would have been smarter to announce that she would be out of sight, but it was far from the end of the world.

Except, of course, that it was _Anna_ , and it was not losing sight of her but losing her altogether that Elsa feared. Hiccup followed between the dragons, but Elsa’s steps had become strides and he had to break into a jog to catch up to her as she began to make her way around the edge of the clearing.

“Anna!”

He caught Elsa by the arm just as she called, a proper shout this time and enough for one of the Nadders to spread its wings a little, wary, and for another to raise its tail. Defensive, that was all, but still enough to show that they were spooked.

“Elsa,” he began to say, but she jerked her arm away from his touch all over again. His hand curled into a frustrated fist even as his voice stayed calm. “It’s fine. You stay here, I’ll cast an eye nearby.”

“We know about these dragons,” she replied in an undertone, “but there are many things that could…” relief flooded her face as she looked over his shoulder again, and pushed past him to run towards the treeline.

Hiccup stepped back, and nearly stumbled over a small dip in the ground that caught his left foot unawares. With a wheel of his arms, he managed to catch himself, and turned with a sigh and the full expectation of seeing Anna coming out of the forest again perfectly well and whole. Gobber might have accused Hiccup of being protective, but it seemed that he had nothing on Elsa.

The words of a subtle ‘told you so’ were just trickling towards his lips when he caught sight of Anna and stopped to stare. She had both arms stretched out to the side, and at least half a dozen Terrible Terrors were about her person, on her arms and clinging to her hip, sitting on her shoulders and, in one case, looking very pleased with itself and sitting atop her head.

“What the…”

He trailed off in disbelief as he hurried over towards them, Elsa holding Anna at a careful arm’s length and looking just as confused as Hiccup felt. One of the Terrors wrapped its tail around Elsa’s hand, and she did nothing more than stare at it.

“Anna?” he settled for, not even sure what question he could ask at this point.

Apparently unaware, Anna gave him a beaming smile. “Aren’t they sweet?”

“’Sweet’ is… not the word that comes to mind with Terrible Terrors,” said Hiccup. The one on Anna’s left shoulder took the opportunity to lick her ear, and she giggled.

“Anna, where did you go?” Elsa said. She unwrapped the Terror’s tail with her other hand, and ignored its doleful expression. “I could not see you.”

“Sorry,” she said, with a wince. “But I saw this little guy,” she gestured with a bump of her hip, presumably meaning the yellow-green Terror that was clinging to her tunic and looking at her adoringly, tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth, “in the trees, and I went to say hello because hey, that’s why we’re here, to befriend wild dragons, right? Only then this guy appeared,” a wave of her right hand, and the purple Terror sitting on it clung on for dear life, “so I said hello to him, and then of course, like you said, they come in big flocks, and–”

“Please tell me you haven’t bought a whole Terror flock,” Hiccup said quickly. He knew that Terrors could cluster by the dozens, and Bork had sworn that he had seen over a hundred together once.

It was a huge relief when Anna should her head. “No, looks like it’s just these guys. One, two three, four, five,” she counted the ones across her arms and shoulders, “six,” the one on her hip, “seven,” she waggled one foot.

“Seven?” Not sure what else he could really do, Hiccup bent down to peer into Anna’s boot. With an indignant squeak, a young Terror, probably not much more than a hatchling, stuck its heat out and tried to spit flame in his direction. It was not much more than a sputter.

Elsa frowned. “Is that…”

“Hey, little guy…” Hiccup tried to scoop the hatchling out, while Anna stood on one leg. It earnt him a nipped finger for his trouble, but it didn’t draw blood, and on the second go he managed to scoop it out and get it lying on its belly on his palm. “Where did you find him, Anna?”

“He was kind of hiding in the bushes, and then he climbed into my boot,” she said. Her arms were starting to sag, but she hitched them back up again. “He’s a hatchling, right?”

Hiccup nodded, running his right hand gently down the Terror’s back. “Yeah. He’s not looking too great, though. Kind of dull skin.” That could just be getting close to shedding, he supposed, but he could feel the backbone too clearly for him to be happy. Hiccup shifted his weight so that he could crouch down more comfortably, and straightened out the Terror’s tail.

It hid its nose in the crook of his fingers. To the tip of its tail, it was perhaps ten inches long, with a blue back that tended to a green belly. The horns were only faint nubs on its skull. It allowed Hiccup to check each of its feet in turn, and barely resisted him lifting its chin so that he could look at the folds of skin beneath.

A fat tick sat there, black with blood. Grimacing, Hiccup drew the Terror’s chin a little further up and tried to remember what Gobber had told him would make a good remedy. He knew that removing it, at least, was a good start.

“You have not been having a good time, have you?” he said. There were no tweezers around here, so he went for the next best thing and used what nails he had to pinch around the tick’s head and pry it loose. The Terror squirmed and squeaked, but then the tick was gone and there was only a small spot of blood on the skin to show for it. Hiccup dropped the tick right beside his boot, and used his foot to crush it. “That looks like the only one, at least. Hope he doesn’t get sick from it.”

A clicking tongue above him made him look up again, to see that Anna was coaxing the Terrors off her arms and back into the air once again. She let the ones on her shoulder and head stay, and the one on her hip squawked but clung on as she crouched down as well.

“They can get sick from…” she gestured to the ground.

“One tick, multiple ticks,” said Hiccup, automatically supplying the vocabulary in the same way he had been doing with Elsa for the past year now. “Yeah, tick bites can make them ill, and for some of the problems there’s not really anything Gobber or Gothi know of that can help. If it’s one, it’s not such a danger, sometimes you can get ten or twenty of them… but usually it’s not a dragon this small…”

Even the hatchlings of the other species had been pretty much the size of a fully grown Terror. Hiccup had no idea how old this one was, whether it had been born at Snoggletog like the others, or even whether it was related to or being looked after any of the adults that Anna had also managed to find

“Can we help him?” Anna said. She tilted her head slightly, then caught herself as the Terror perched there almost fell off, tangling its claws in her head. Carefully, she reached out and ran a finger down the hatchling’s back. “He’s so cold…”

“Most of what Gobber taught me was for the big dragons,” Hiccup said. “You know, the arena. That’s what he knows most of. But we can try, I guess. Keep him warm, feed him up…”

“I’ll do it.” Anna promptly held out her hand, palm flat, even as Hiccup blinked at her. For a good few seconds, he was completely lost for words. “I’ll look after him. If it is a him, I guess. I mean, probably better to get to know him first, before we try and find that out. He doesn’t seem to be objecting to being called him, anyway.”

“It’s not like they speak Northur,” he replied, the words distracted. “Look, Anna, this could be a lot of work, and it’s not what you came out here for. You’d have to do this as well as learning. I can’t ask–”

She rolled her eyes. “When are you going to learn that it’s never _you_ asking things of _me_?” she replied. She wrapped one hand around the Terror, fingers worming across Hiccup’s palm, then as she picked it up scooped the other hand underneath so that she was cradling its whole body. Before Hiccup could say anything more, she had lain the dragon across her chest, one hand keeping it in place on the curve of her breasts while with the other she tugged free the old handkerchief at her belt.

“You really want to do this,” said Hiccup, but it was not even a question this time.

Without even looking up, Anna wrapped the handkerchief around the Nadder’s rear end, which was probably pretty smart if she was about to do what Hiccup suspected she was about to do, and then proved him right by slipping the dragon inside the neck of her top. Laughing, Hiccup ran one hand over his eyes.

“Why do I even ask…”

“It’s warm there!” said Anna, and it was all Hiccup could do not to laugh more. “I mean, I can’t exactly put him in my armpit, and I don’t really want to leave him in my boot because I’m worried I’ll tread on him. Here,” she gestured to her chest, “he’s warm.”

Hiccup looked up at Elsa, as if she might have a clue what to do with her sister, but she was wearing an expression of equally fond exasperation. “You two,” said Hiccup, pointing between them, “are as bad as each other.” When Elsa’s eyes went wide, and she opened her mouth to protest, he wagged a finger. “You remember how we met Toothless?”

With a somewhat sheepish smile, Elsa looked away to the back of Anna’s head. She put her hand gently on her sister’s upper back, presumably avoiding the Terror that was dangling its tail there.

“All right, sure,” he said, holding up his hands. “Not what we came here to do, but I guess what we _do_ do. Come on, then.”

As they got to her feet, Anna pounced forwards as if she were about to hug him, then caught herself and put a hand to her chest instead. “Sorry,” she said. “I mean, thank you. I mean, sorry was kind of for the dragon. Thank you was for you.”

“I guessed as much.”

 

 

 

 

 

Although he and the other riders had checked the island end to end and found no signs of human presence, they were setting watches all the same. It was good practice, Astrid had said, which had been her way of agreeing with Hiccup’s tentative idea the first time that he had suggested it. The trainees would all be with one of the riders when they took watches, though who it was would rotate, and Hiccup had made sure that Anna was paired up with Astrid for her first shift. She was probably the only one who had never really experienced watches before; sitting in the troll’s tunnels did not exactly count.

Everyone managed to settle down that evening with only a modicum of squabbling over blankets and elbows in each other’s ribs, and the forest fell quiet around them until it was just the sound of the stream, the occasional snort or snore, and a rustling whenever one of the dragons shifted position. Hiccup and Wartihog had the first watch, and although Hiccup was a little nervous it went perfectly peacefully. Apparently getting to meet wild dragons had been enough for Wartihog to forgive Hiccup his slights, or possibly even to understand that Hiccup had only been trying to help. As they reached the deepest part of the night – nights were still so short that they only needed two watches, as in tents they would wake with dawn anyway – he sent Wartihog to bed, and went to wake up Astrid and Anna for their watch.

Astrid was right beside the front door of the tent, and her eyes snapped open as soon as moonlight reached her face. She didn’t say anything, just nodded and sat up from beneath the blankets, reaching for the pauldrons, boots and skirt at the foot of her bedroll. He supposed that he should have anticipated that she would not want to sleep on a skirt covered in spikes.

Even with his night vision, he could not see clearly where Anna was in the tent, but as he craned his head he could see Elsa’s bright hair at the furthest end. Anna would, of course, be next to her. With a nod to Astrid, he backed out, walked carefully around the tent to avoid tripping on the somewhat haphazard guy ropes that had been put up, and unlaced the back flaps to a few feet up, enough that he could stick his head in.

Elsa was closest to the tent door, facing it, expression peaceful in sleep. None of the blankets were over her, but there looked to be at least three scrunched up against her back, where Anna seemed to be trying to cuddle close and was apparently oblivious to the fact that she was burying her face in blanket instead. One of Anna’s arms was stretched out, over the blankets and Elsa’s hip both, hand dangling in mid-air.

Waking Astrid had been no problem, of course, but Hiccup knew that this was going to be harder. That Anna would need keeping awake was, admittedly, another reason that he had chosen Astrid for her first partner on watch. He tapped the back of Anna’s hand, then rapped harder on the back of her wrist; she twitched and mumbled something, but buried her face deeper in the blanket. Rolling his eyes, Hiccup picked up Anna’s wrist and gave it an actual shake, then a tug, until she blearily raised her head and peered at him with half-open eyes.

“Watch,” he whispered. She pulled a face at him, and he tried to look stern.

“Anna, you must go,” mumbled Elsa. Hiccup had not even realised that she had woken, and he grimaced. He had no idea these days whether Elsa was sleeping well or not, though he knew that he had not found her under Toothless’s wing since Anna had returned, and he had been hoping not to wake anyone. Luckily Speedifist and Ruffnut – the latter apparently kneeling with her face on the ground and her rear in the air, making occasional snorting sounds – seemed to be sleeping peacefully on as Astrid finished redressing, a silhouette against the embers of the fire.

When Anna groaned, Elsa turned around and stuck one hand beneath the blankets, making Anna make a strangled sound and jerk away. She sat up abruptly and narrowed her eyes at Elsa. “Cold hands is _mean_.”

“But effective,” said Hiccup. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “Come on.”

He did not expect Elsa to get out of the tent in order to allow Anna to do the same, but she stood up and brushed stray grass off her dress as she did so. The dress had probably been knee-length on its original owner, but Elsa had picked it apart at the seams and almost completely remade it into a calf-length, rusty-orange dress that wrapped right around her and tied at her hip.

Anna, clad in more usual Viking garb, crawled out behind with her boots in one hand and the hatchling Terrible Terror sticking its nose out of her tunic to look with some interest at the world around them. Once outside the tent, she swung her legs round and pulled her boots on, before groping blindly for her belt and dragging that out as well. As she got to her feet, she hitched up her tunic to lace it through the belt-loops on her leggings, and Hiccup shook his head as he looked away.

“See?” said Anna. She flicked one unravelling plait over her shoulder. “Totally awaaaake.” Whatever attempt she was making at sounding normal was completely spoilt by the yawn that overtook her.

“Don’t worry,” Hiccup said, with a pat on Anna’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine.”

It would take Astrid only a few heartbeats to spot that Anna was half asleep, and about the same length of time to do something about it. Considering that Astrid’s wake-up methods occasionally involved pointed placement of axes, however, it would probably be better were Elsa not to see this one, and he gestured back to the tent again.

“Spread out,” he suggested. “Make the most of it.”

Elsa laughed softly, while Anna clumped around the tent and swore as one of the guy ropes caught her in the ankle. “No. I am… all right.”

“You want to talk?” he cocked his head, nodding slightly to the woods around them.

Though she did not smile, Elsa looked at least calm as she glanced around them. The air was cool and smelt of the sea, as it did all over an island this small. Even the wood fire and the presence of a dozen people could not affect that.

“It would be nice,” she said.

He nodded to the quiet of the woods. “Come on. Let’s leave them to their watch.”

 


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes for this chapter: dragon carcasses as an aftermath of dragon-on-dragon violence.

The woods were cool and quiet around them, and besides anything else it was a relief to not be having to keep one eye on the trainees. It felt oddly like the old days, back when they had sat in the cove and it was just the two of them.

“You are well?” said Elsa.

Hiccup realised that they had been walking in silence, as he admired the trees around them and the enveloping night. He smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. Yes, I’m fine. Just been… rather a long day.”

“I heard you awake early this morning.”

“Then you were up that early as well,” he pointed out. Elsa shrugged. “I’ll be more fine when we get back to Berk, I won’t lie. Being responsible for… _that lot_ can be a bit of a headache.”

With a tease of a smile, Elsa leant over and put her hand on Hiccup’s forehead. He almost pulled away on instinct, too used to a hand on his forehead meaning his temperature was being checked for a fever, but he had to admit that her hand, just cool and no longer painfully cold, was quite pleasant. She only held it there for a moment, however, before letting it drop back to her side again. “You are doing well, though.”

“Well, once I revised my hopes from ‘exciting learning opportunity’ to ‘getting everyone back with their limbs intact’ it looked far more manageable.”

Elsa laughed.

“No, it’s… it’s going well,” admitted Hiccup. At least, it felt like admitting. Or possibly jinxing. “I don’t think I was expecting quite the response that I got, though.”

“Speedifist?” she said.

He nodded. “She seemed so sure of herself, I… I don’t know.” Though perhaps he, of all people, should have known what it was like to expect one thing and then finding himself facing something quite another. Especially when it came to dragons. “Anna’s doing well, though. You must be proud of her.”

Warmth filled Elsa’s eyes, and her smile was all hope and no sharp edges. “I am,” she said softly. “I do not know if I have a right to be proud… she is so much her own. But I am.”

“She missed you as well,” said Hiccup. “She didn’t talk about it as much, but, well, we only saw each other once every three years. Those days, though, when we were trying to find you…” he trailed off and shook his head. “I’m just glad we did. She’s done a lot for you,” he added, looking over. The words were a little bolder than he would usually dare, a little bolder than he might have dared anywhere other than this peaceful forest, certainly bolder than he would ever have been in front of anyone, including Anna herself, possibly even including Toothless.

“I know,” said Elsa. She clenched her fist, and a spark lit between her fingers; as she flattened out her hand again, the light came to rest just at the base of her index finger, wrapped around, and became an icy ring. It took only a couple of seconds, and then she slipped the ring off her finger and dropped it into Hiccup’s outstretched hand.

“Not _just_ the magic,” said Hiccup, but he held up the ring in amazement anyway. The moonlight glinted through it, the ice flawless, and he tried to slide it onto his finger in turn but got it stuck at the second joint. Elsa started laughing. “Seriously? Seri– you have narrow fingers,” he grumbled, swapping the ring to his little finger instead. There, it was a little too large, but he could feel the smooth cool ice against his skin, not feeling as cold as the natural thing. “That is stunning.”

“We did a lot of rings,” she said. “It was a bit like learning words again. Those first days,” she looked from the ring to Hiccup, “when I was in the cove, I would say the words you said over and over again. It was soothing, though,” she added, perhaps seeing the frown that Hiccup could feel starting to crease at his brow and make his smile fade. “It – gave me something to do.”

“You learnt so quickly.”

She huffed a laugh. “Anna says that when we were children, we had lessons in Northur. I had lessons. She only started… afterwards. Perhaps I was remembering those, a little.”

“Your grammar is better than the twins’, and half the time I have no idea where you have learnt what you’ve learnt. Really, though,” he looked at her more seriously. “It isn’t just the magic.”

He had to stop and concentrate, sometimes, to think about how Elsa had been when they had first met. Not just the sharpness of her bones and the pallor of her cheeks, but the way that she had half-cringed away from him, the number of times that he had seen tears in her eyes. There had been this sort of relief in her eyes ever since Anna had come back with them to Berk, an awe, and it seemed that what fear remained had been transmuted to the fear that this would end again.

The year had been a slow one. The last moon had been like a waterfall.

“Much of it is the magic,” Elsa replied, and he could hear in her voice that it was admitting a deeper truth, not trying to hide one. “It is… it is so much of me. I did not say…”

When she paused, looking away, Hiccup waited. He was not sure whether it would be a good idea to take her hand or not.

“Before,” said Elsa finally, the word carefully placed, “it was like standing on one leg, I suppose. Work and work just to do nothing, and it felt so easy to fall. It is not like that any more.”

“Is it – better?”

She nodded. “I did not realise. But the magic, I think – it helps to keep me alive, in some ways. I do not feel the cold,” she added quickly, with a wave to the air around them although it was entirely mild. From the pause that she took to steady herself, though, Hiccup could see that something more was to come. Elsa stopped walking, and Hiccup took her hands impulsively. “I did not need to eat,” she said, hands trembling slightly in his. “Those days… on the mountain. I did not feel hungry, when the magic was there.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t just… everything?” said Hiccup. It was easy enough to lose an appetite.

But Elsa nodded. “I am sure. I have felt it before, I think. Some of the winters when I was in the Wildlands. I did not know it then, but looking back, the magic sustained me sometimes. I was only young, I was not good at finding food then.”

Hiccup did not know what to say. He could feel fear and anger swelling at the thought of Elsa, a child and alone, unable to find enough food to fill her belly, but there was nowhere to direct it, nothing to be angry _at_ when she stood before him whole and healthy and with the hope for acceptance still in her eyes. Perhaps the Silver Priests; it was their fault, in the end, what had happened to her. But he could not push his mind so far away, not now. Instead, he squeezed Elsa’s hands.

“You’re here,” he said. “I’m glad, however that came to be.”

A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Nervous, but there. “Thank you. I did not want to see it, perhaps. That it was helping me. I did not want the help, not from the magic;” for a moment she shook her head, looking away with frustration in her eyes. Then it passed, and she met Hiccup’s gaze again. “But I should accept it, now. That it is part of me, that it can help me. I was not hungry, I was not thirsty, I was not cold. I should make it good. Anna says that,” she added, the words blurted, with a slight hunch of her shoulders again and her eyes looking for acceptance in Hiccup’s gaze. “You did, as well. I am sorry I did not hear.”

“It’s all right.” He ran his thumbs over the backs of her hands. “I can’t imagine, but you did it. You’re still here.”

“To accept something is good, when you thought it was not?” Her voice might have been level, but her gaze was piercing. “I think you can imagine that.”

He opened his mouth to protest, then realised exactly what she was talking about and felt his cheeks grow hot. It was easy to remember that piercing moment, of looking at the terrifying form of a Night Fury facing him through the rain and seeing, stark and beautiful, the way that the world had looked through the dragon’s eyes instead. One moment that had changed so much. “That’s cheating,” he said weakly.

“I think, though,” she said, after a moment that left Hiccup adrift and faintly bewildered in his own thoughts, “that I see now. And I am learning again. Like new words.”

“Those dice?” said Hiccup. Elsa nodded. “And rings.”

“The rings were for a reason,” Elsa said, her voice trembling with that touch of uncertainty again, that yearning for acceptance.

She slipped her hands out of Hiccup’s, and he almost went to take them back but caught himself as she bought them together, rolling them over each other in the way that he had seen her do before. Light sparked there, like a captured star in the night, and then as her hands passed over each other the light was spread across her skin as smooth as fabric. Elsa coaxed the light out to cover her down to her fingertips, the edges this time more clear-cut around her wrists than the root-like webs to which Hiccup had grown used, and spread her hands out, palms down, in front of Hiccup.

The light solidified into ice in a wave of glittering points, forming pale blue gloves. No; Hiccup blinked, and looked again. Elsa’s pale skin was visible through the ice, and as his night vision reasserted himself from the show of light he realised that what he had taken for gloves were chainmail mitons, delicate interlinked rings of ice that cover each of Elsa’s fingers individually, ending tidily a couple of inches below her wrist.

Hiccup stared, dumbstruck. He took one of Elsa’s hands in both of his, still not convinced that the ice would not shatter or dissolve into snow the moment that he touched it, but the pattern of the rings against his skin was undeniable.

“What–” he was not entirely sure what he was even going to ask. Rings and dice and simple orbs, the things that he had seen Anna encouraging Elsa to make, had seemed to him like the nails that he had drawn in the hundreds during his years in the smithy. This was more complicated chainmail than Hiccup would even be able to make; Gobber might be able to approach this, in iron, but it would take him moons at least. “You.” His tongue still refused to work. “Great gods,” he finally managed.

Carefully, Elsa slipped her hand out of the miton, leaving it in Hiccup’s hold still. The rings were fine, less than half an inch across, and interlinked in such a way that they flowed smoothly over his skin. He turned the miton over hesitantly, still not sure what to think of it, not even sure what to do save stare in awe at the work of it.

“Hiccup?” said Elsa finally, voice very small. “You are all right?”

The first thing from his lips was laughter, a delighted disbelieving sound that seemed to snag on the trees around them before he could force himself back under control. Hiccup realised that he was grinning like a fool. “This is amazing!” he said. He saw Elsa’s surprised twitch back. “I had no idea you could do anything like this! I mean, not just the effort that must have been involved but the,” holding the miton in one hand, he gestured at it with the other, “the, the _control_ must have been incredible. _This_ is incredible.”

Tearing his eyes away from the ice for more than a split second, he looked at Elsa properly. She did not look upset, but she certainly looked a little confused. It occurred to him that his words might have sounded like an outburst after so much astonished staring.

“I spent years at the forge,” he said, pointing to the miton again. “And if you look around Berk, yes, there’s some chainmail, but it’s mostly scalemail and leather. And Gobber hates fixing chainmail, he really does, it’s as fiddly as anything so he struggles with his hook and I can’t do it because I haven’t the skill. Seven years,” his hand came to rest on top of the ice, cool and smooth against his skin with not even the snag of a welding joint, “and I would not have been able to create a finger of this. In iron or steel, this would be a beautiful piece of work.”

He took a deep breath.

“And you made it in a moment.”

Elsa tilted her head, eyes scanning his face, then looked down at the miton still on her right hand. _Nobody_ on Berk had chainmail mitons; there were a few hauberks, but that was it, people preferring to use sturdy leather gloves that were far easier to make, maintain or replace. Most of the time they were fighting dragons anyway, and if a dragon injured a person’s hand it would almost always be a matter of amputation, not of mere cuts.

“I was thinking about what Tuffnut and Ruffnut said,” she said, as if it were some explanation. Considering how inclined the twins were to saying any number of things, however, Hiccup looked at her blankly. “It was long ago, I suppose,” she added, with an awkward shrug. “When I made the snow for them, in the arena. They asked if I could make the armour again.”

“I have a dim and distant memory of the time,” he admitted. Strange, that it had been less than a year ago. Then again, things just the other side of the visit to Arendelle seemed so very far away. “But believe me when I say that you don’t have to listen to the twins. They’re still waiting for Snaptrappers to sprout in Mildew’s field.”

It wasn’t that much of a surprise that she ignored his quips. “I wondered if I could,” said Elsa. “I was not thinking when I made the armour, it was not deliberate. From what I have seen now, it was more like Arendellen armour, not like Berkian. But I wondered…”

She clenched her right fist, with a silken sound. The miton in Hiccup’s hand was very light, he realised distantly, and the small rings would make it manoeuvrable.

“The first time I tried, the ice was solid.” She chuckled. “I could not move my fingers, or pull my hand out. Anna had to stop me from panicking over it. Then I tried plates, but when I moved my hand they fell apart. So Anna suggested chainmail instead.”

“And you made this.” Hiccup tried to slip it on, still with some wariness. The ice was quite literally magical, and a small part of him wondered that it had not fallen apart the moment that he, the moment that anyone other than Elsa, touched it. As it was, the wrist was too narrow for him to do much more than bunch his fingers into it, but even that was enough to feel that the inside was as comfortable as the outer.

“Not on the first try,” said Elsa, and the wry note to her voice suggested that there had been an incident there as well. “But… eventually. And I tested it,” she added, with an almost fearful glance. Hiccup frowned, not sure what she could mean. “It did not melt, near the fire, although I felt the heat on my hand and it felt like it needed… more effort, somehow. And I tried to cut it, and it held.”

The words caught him completely by surprise. “Not while you were wearing it, I hope,” Hiccup said immediately, an off-the-cuff joke while he tried to think of something more relevant to actually say than _wow_ , and he only took the words seriously himself when he saw Elsa’s embarrassed expression and wince. Pressing down the urge to tell her to be more careful with herself, he mumbled something that was not particularly words, and put his hand to the hilt of his knife. “May I?”

She nodded quickly. Hiccup drew his knife, regretting for a moment that it was Gronckle iron and therefore something of an unfair test. He draped the miton over the palm of his hand and put the tip of his knife to it gently, expecting it to give with very little effort.

Nothing happened. Slowly, Hiccup increased the pressure of the knife, putting the point deliberately into the centre of one of the rings to make best use of the blade. Still the ice held, and Hiccup gave a disbelieving snort as he pressed harder, until he could feel his biceps and his shoulder getting involved. Before he could do something ridiculous like slice his own palm open instead, he gave up, and looked back to Elsa.

There was something small and hopeful in her eyes, and after a moment Hiccup recognised it all too well. It was the same look he had given his father so many times when he was young, having done something that, he hoped, would be _right_ this time.

“Let me guess,” he said, “you used your Gronckle iron knife as well.”

“Yes.”

“Probably should have asked that first.” For all that Elsa had been uncertain about accepting the gift from Gobber at first, the knife was always at her side and she clearly treasured it. “This is… I actually don’t know what to say. It’s amazing,” he said, with emphasis.

Elsa always looked so much younger when she smiled. “It is good?”

“In steel, this would be worth a fortune,” he replied. There’s no weld points, it’s flexible, I’m pretty sure it’s an eight-in-one which explains why it’s so dense, but those are even _harder_ to make than four-in-one.” Even for Stoick, Gobber would not be persuaded to work with the finer, fiddler patterns that were needed to make even standard weaves of eight-in-one mail. Hiccup traced his thumb over the tip of one of the fingers, admiring the smooth close to it, then noticed Elsa’s silence and looked up to see that she was simply frowning at him. “And you didn’t mean to ask for a blacksmith’s critique,” he concluded. “Be careful what you say to Gobber if he ever sees this.”

If Hiccup had been awed, Gobber would probably be enraptured, just by the finish of it.

“Thank you, I think,” said Elsa, with a laugh.

“But I mean it all,” he said. “This is incredible. I hope that you see that.”

She looked again at the miton she still wore, turning it such that the moonlight caught in the ice. It was too fitted, that was the only thing that Hiccup could see that was wrong about it; mail was always worn over leather or a gambeson, to absorb the blunt impact as well as the sharp. That was the smith in him talking, though, and it was clear that was not what Elsa was worried about.

“Using the ice as armour,” she said, cupping one hand in the other and smoothing the fine lattice of mail. “Is it like using it as a weapon?”

“There’s nothing wrong with making this,” said Hiccup. “This doesn’t mean that you’re violent, or dangerous, or wrong. All right?”

Even at night, he could see the shine of tears in Elsa’s eyes as she nodded, and when he wrapped his arms around her she did not at all resist being pulled into a hug. Her head came to rest on his shoulder, and her arms wrapped around him in return. She still felt cold, rather than warm as most people would, and there were strange tremors as if little waves of cold were coming from her still.

He wondered whether it was in part the Arendellen in her, that so hated the thought of raising a weapon and did not seem to be able to see it even as a necessity at times. The horror in her voice when she had told them about the man in the Wildlands had not just been at the thought that Anna was going to die, he had heard that even then.

Hiccup had never killed a person. He knew that he could not understand what Elsa had been through to do that. The thought of fighting Mildew had been sickening enough, and it had taken everything he had to be able to face the idea of drawing blood. But he knew that his father had killed before, humans as well as dragons. There had not been war with other islands or groups since Weselton, that had been one of Stoick’s great accomplishments, but less than a generation ago Berk had been at war, and people had died, and people had killed.

It wasn’t murder. And what Elsa had done was not murder either, and he wished that he could sit down with her and talk it through, take away some of the pain wracking her. But he suspected that she could not sit through those words, at least not yet.

Maybe, when she did hear them, they would not be from him at all. He suspected that Anna would be the one to get through.

As Elsa pulled away, eyes dry again, she clenched her fist one more time. Both of the mitons withered away, falling like cold sparks between Hiccup’s fingers. “I am still practicing,” she said. Her voice was only a little thickened.

“Keep practicing,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

They talked about Anna’s adoration of the hatchling Terrible Terror for a while, a more neutral topic, and Hiccup explained that he and Fishlegs had been doing what they could to learn from Gobber and Gothi what they knew about taking care of dragons. Anything else, they would have to learn as they went, and Hiccup was not afraid to tell Elsa, at least, that he wanted to learn more but didn’t want the opportunity to do so, because it would mean that a dragon had been injured.

He knew full well that they were talking away a good part of the night, that he would be tired the next day, and that he would probably not manage to get away with his partially-formed plans to claim that he was scouting and go and nap with Toothless somewhere. At least Toothless was getting some sleep. But for now, there were not enough hours in the day, and talking felt more important than sleeping.

Most likely, he would start regretting _that_ in a day or two.

“I do want to see if we can find one of the Monstrous Nightmares,” he said. “Even if we don’t really get too close to it. Even Hookfang was kind of unpredictable. But if we can just get into the same clearing as one, maybe feed it some fish, just push the boundaries a little.”

Beside him, Elsa froze, body going tense. Hiccup immediately stopped as well, hand going to his knife and eyes scanning the trees around them. The loose deciduous forest remained quiet, not even bats or birds to break the calm.

“What is it?” he said, looking into the treetops for any sign of movement that was not the wind.

“On the ground,” said Elsa. Her voice was serious and low.

Immediately Hiccup followed her instruction, and in the cool moonlight saw what she must have been talking about – a carcass on the ground, white bones and still-red flesh, clearly less than a day or two old in this weather. It smelt of death more than rot so far.

He put his finger to his lips and held his breath, listening for anything that might have been a regular rhythm. But there was nothing around them, and he shook his head as he breathed out again. “Whatever did it, I think it’s gone.”

“You did not see predators here.”

Dragons were predators, technically, but their prey of choice was fish, and Hiccup had never seen a dragon leave this much of a carcass behind. Nadders in particular were very fond of bones.

“No,” he said, uneasily. “The dragons were the only big animals around.”

Still with one hand on the hilt of his knife, he walked over to the carcass and crouched down next to it. It took him a moment to even realise what it was: a Terrible Terror. The bones had been picked almost clean, ragged flesh clinging to them and the skin shredded, but the skull was still intact and the proportions were all wrong for it to be a hatchling of any other species.

Hiccup put his hand over his mouth as he felt bile rise in his throat. Elsa hunkered down beside him and looked over the body with a grim expression. “This is an animal,” she said. “Not human.”

He nodded, not trusting his mouth for a moment before he swallowed a few times. “Not a very big one, either,” he said. Even the ribs were largely intact, although most of them looked to have been ripped away from the spine. “Or there wouldn’t be this much left.”

Straightening up, he made his decision. “We need to get back to the camp immediately. Wake everyone up for the rest of the night, but stay quiet. Leave at first light.”

Gods, could it have been that it was night? Stupid, to only check during the day. He had checked caves and shores and the forest and every part of the island that he could, but it had always been during the day. And now it might have put the others in danger. He felt the sickness in his throat again, but this time it managed to be more bitter somehow.

“Hiccup?” Elsa’s voice had a warning in it. As she got to her feet, she stepped a little further into the forest, around the tree which had the Terror body at its foot.

He stepped after her, and any question died on his lips. Not three feet away was a second corpse, this one less destroyed. The head of the Terror was almost intact, eye pulled from its socket and dangling against its cheek but mouth still together and open, loops of intestine spilling from beneath it.

“Some dragons eat other dragons,” he breathed. The Red Death, that had been the first, and then the Whispering Death had come for the hatchlings early in the spring. And Terrors were small, flighty, difficult to fight more because of their speed and their numbers than the actual power of any individual. But it was still like a knife in his gut when he saw the second body, not just a body but a pattern.

Hands starting to shake, he walked towards it, and was barely even surprised when a third corpse appeared in the gloom. This one had been ripped into two, the spine broken and legs ragged messes, but he could see the throat outstretched and intact.

Whatever had happened, these dragons had not been killed quickly.

“Do you know what could have done this?” said Elsa.

Hiccup shook his head. There were some dragons that were known to be particularly violent to humans, but nobody had ever much cared for how dragons behaved towards other dragons. That was what had made it so terrible to see the Whispering Deaths attacking. And most of the worst ones that they had found had been the mighty ones, the Green Death and the Leviathan or the huge monstrous dragons that were supposed to live in the deepest parts of the sea, the ones that did not even have a name because that would be giving them too much power.

Three dead Terrible Terrors, and it must have all been at much the same time. They would flee, surely, and not come to investigate an area that smelt of death. But he still had a nagging weight in his guts as he continued on to the clearing ahead of them, visible in the gap in the trunks and audible in the difference in the wind.

The smell of death was stronger here, not like hearty meat but sickly with pre-decay, sharp with faeces where dying animals voided their waste. Drawing his knife altogether, Hiccup carefully pushed through the bushes and stepped out into the clearing, holding the branches aside for Elsa to follow him.

And stopped in his tracks.

Bodies littered the clearing. The blood was dark in the moonlight, but the bones were white and the pelts still showed flashes of their colour beneath the guts that were smeared across them. It was impossible to count how many; too many of them were wholly destroyed, only recognisable as bodies and not as the Terrible Terrors they must have been.

He had to stand carefully, so as not to put his feet in their guts. So as not to tread on their corpses.

“ _Kelaa aj atvaas_ ,” said Elsa. Her hand wrapped around Hiccup’s forearm, and he wasn’t sure whether she was taking support or offering it. Either way, it was tight enough to hurt, and to cut through the horror pinning him in place.

“We need to get back to the camp,” he said. “ _Now_. There’s no way one animal could do this.”

Whatever it was, he had missed it. He just hoped that he had had not endangered everyone that had come with him.

Behind them, a dragon screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course I was going to do something terrible.


	23. Chapter 23

They ran back. Bushes whipped at Hiccup’s legs and branches caught his face, and he stopped paying attention to where his feet were falling and simply _ran_.

After the first scream, sound erupted from the camp. He heard Stormfly’s shriek, Hookfang’s roar, Toothless’s piercing cry, but mixed in were the sharp barking sound of something he did not recognise, and the crashing of rocks. Fire puffed into the sky – Barf and Belch’s, he knew at a glance – and he saw the brilliant flash of Toothless’s fire. His lungs and his legs burned as he ran, but slowing was not an option, not even – _especially_ not – as the sky ahead of them became clear and the world went quiet and, somehow, it was worse.

He burst into the clearing with his knife in his hand, whirling around. And it was like walking into Helheim. The first thing that he saw was fire, the large tent ablaze, and beyond the flames he could see the slumped shapes of Hookfang and Barf and Belch, lying still against the base of the cliff where he had left them. The women’s tent was still intact, but its mouth flapped open and black in the wind, and the men’s tent had been dragged entirely to the ground in a tangle of ropes and splintered poles, formless still shapes beneath the wool.

“Toothless?” he called, because someone’s name had to be the first to leave his lips. He scanned the woods around them, just as Elsa pushed her way from the trees as well and staggered two or three steps, staring in horror at what remained of their camp. “Astrid?”

“Anna!”

Hiccup was not sure that his shouts were exactly strong, but Elsa’s voice was stricken, one step from a cry. He didn’t have time to help her, though, not as he ran over to the women’s tent and threw open the flaps to see Ruffnut slumped in the doorway, face to the ground and hand outstretched. She wasn’t moving.

“Oh gods,” he mumbled. He dropped to his knees and shook her arm; she did not respond, and when he put a hand in front of her mouth he was relieved to feel her breathing. “Ruffnut?” he shook her shoulder again. There was no sign of injury, no blood, but her body was almost stiff as he tried to wake her. “Ruffnut, answer me!”

“Anna!” cried Elsa again, and this time it was a cry, desperate on the air. Hiccup looked over his shoulder to see her standing in the middle of the clearing, eyes panning first high and then around them.

“Elsa!” he shouted, doing his best to sound in control. “I need you over here. Ruffnut’s not moving.”

She turned to face him, breathing fast and ragged, and he was about to repeat the command when there was a familiar roar from above them, and Hiccup scrambled sideways on his hands and knees to look up the line of the cliff for the shadow of Toothless in the darkness.

“Bud,” he breathed.

With one more look at Ruffnut, still seeing no wounds or anything that he could help with, he got to his feet and ran towards the base of the cliff, skirting around the waves of heat rolling off the large tent. There were embers in the air; that would be dangerous too. But he could hardly think, not as Toothless scrabbled down the almost-sheer cliff again, knocking down rocks as he did so.

A Gronckle roared in the air behind him, and Hiccup spun with a warning on his tongue that faded when he saw that it was Meatlug, with Fishlegs on her back and Speedifist clinging to him. They came down to land in the middle of the clearing, and Hiccup thanked whatever gods were listening because it was a start, he had found two more of them, and Toothless butted his back in greeting.

“Hiccup,” said Fishlegs, almost tumbling off Meatlug’s side. “Thank Thor. Thank Thor.”

“Fishlegs, what happened?” he said. “Where is everyone.”

“Stormfly took Astrid,” he said, “I didn’t see the others. Hiccup, it was all so fast, they were shrieking and they were everywhere and then Barf and Belch set the tent on fire and–”

“Fishlegs!” Hiccup felt bad for snapping. “What was it?”

Fishlegs was pale and shaking, barefoot and without his helmet. His voice shook as he replied. “Speed Stingers.”

“What?” said Hiccup. “They don’t live this far south.”

“I know what I saw,” said Fishlegs, voice sharpening for a moment. “They were Speed Stingers. Meatlug grabbed me and Speedifist – her hide’s too tough, they can’t sting her.”

Hiccup swallowed. He had to find the others. That had to be the first priority. “Ruffnut’s in the tent. I need her bought out, there’s too much fire around, it’s dangerous. Speedifist, go get her.”

The girl looked shocked but determined, and nodded before hurrying towards the tent.

“Fishlegs, check the other tent. Elsa. Elsa!” he shouted, as he started to move towards the treeline again. “Help me check the dragons!” She gave him a pained look, and it hurt him to look sternly at her. But he could not have her running off as well. “Elsa, I need you over here.”

Her hand curled into a fist as she raised it, but then she ran back over to him and he let out a relieved breath. The heat from the large tent was hitting him in waves, but he was not sure whether Elsa would be able to put it out, or how she would react to being asked. As it was, she joined him, eyes shining as she looked at him almost with betrayal, and went to walk around the back of the tent.

“Wait!” Fishlegs shouted. “They were back there!”

“They what?” said Hiccup, still not at all sure what was supposed to have happened or how Speed Stingers were supposed to have made it this far south, or even if he had heard Fishlegs correctly at all through the panic in the words. But then there was a dragon’s shriek from behind the tent, where Elsa was walking, a scream from her, and a ringing sound like metal on metal.

Hiccup sprang round the corner, to see Elsa backing away from the shadows at the foot of the cliff. Ice wrapped up one of her feet almost to the knee. As they both looked, there was a hissing in the darkness, and Toothless growled as something dragged itself into the edge of the firelight.

Somehow, Fishlegs was right. The Speed Stinger dragged itself into the firelight using its small forelimbs and one moving foot, the other leg broken and hanging uselessly. It was blue-tinged green, and would stand perhaps almost as tall as Hiccup if it were upright; as it caught sight of him, it barked and its tail whipped through the air.

“Are you all right, Elsa?” he said first.

She nodded. “It – it hit the ice.”

Ice which had not been there before. Hiccup looked from the dragon’s whipping tail to the ice on Elsa’s leg, and thought about the ice that had protected her from the fire of the Red Deaths, but pressed his lips together. “Then – good. Let’s leave it.” He made sure to leave a lot of room as he walked round the Speed Stinger, which hissed again and stabbed out with its tail but missed him entirely.

He kept his eyes fixed on Hookfang, at the base of the cliff. The Nightmare’s wings flopped beside him, his head on the ground and his eyes mostly closed, and he might have grunted at the sight of Hiccup but the sound was low and indistinct.

“Hey there, Hookfang.” Crouching down, Hiccup put his hand in front of Hookfang’s nose in turn, and was relieved to feel a puff of air. “Oh, that’s good to feel.” He could see a dark hole at the base of Hookfang’s throat, a puncture would over an inch across, and could guess easily enough where that had come from. “ _Speed Stingers_ ,” Hiccup breathed again, still not sure that he could believe it.

Between the flickering of the fire, he realised that there was a shape underneath one of Hookfang’s wings. Shifting his grip on the knife he had been unable to release, Hiccup sidled closer, going to reach for the edge of the wing before catching himself. He did not want to find out what it was like to be stung by a Speed Stinger.

There was a spear a few yards away, cast carelessly to the ground and only slightly smouldering at one end. Hiccup picked it up, crept back close again, and delicately used the wooden end to raise the edge of Hookfang’s wing.

“Aargh!” Snotlout’s helmet slammed into the spear, knocking it away, then the lump retreated further under Hookfang’s wing. Hiccup sighed.

“Snotlout!” he cupped his hand around his mouth. “It’s me! Since when do Speed Stingers use spears?”

There was a moment’s pause, then Snotlout shuffled back to the edge again and peered out, helmet clutched in one hand. He looked around wildly, then his eyes latched onto Hiccup and he exploded back to his feet. The next thing that Hiccup knew, he was being grabbed into a hug and squeezed tightly.

“OhthankThorohthankThorohthankThor,” Snotlout was saying, the words a mumbled litany against Hiccup’s ear.

“Good to see you in one piece too, Snotlout,” he said, extricating himself from his cousin’s hold. “You got to Hookfang.”

“I was going to try and fight,” said Snotlout, and given the tone of his voice Hiccup believed him. “But then they got Hookfang. So I got under his wing.”

“That was good thinking, Snotlout.” Hiccup looked round to the centre of the clearing, where he could see Fishlegs now putting Tuffnut down beside his sister. Wartihog and Clueless also seemed to have been caught. “Did you see what happened to Anna?”

Elsa looked round from where she was standing beside Barf and Belch. Belch’s eyes twitched occasionally, and his nostrils flared, but that was the only sign of movement. The dark puncture wounds were clearer on their green skin, at least two visible from where Hiccup stood.

But Snotlout shook his head. “She was running over as well, but I lost track of her when they,” he pointed at Barf and Belch, “set fire to the _tent_.”

Elsa’s hand curled into a fist again, and Hiccup did not miss the way that she looked to the forest around them again, the darkness encroaching on the impromptu bonfire of the tent. Speed Stingers were too fast for Anna to have a hope of outrunning them, unless they had been spooked by one of the larger dragons and run in the other direction, but his fear was growing that she had bolted into the woods and been stung there, just out of their sight.

“All right. I want people, two _pairs_ of people, and someone to wait with these guys,” he said, with a wave to those who had been stung. “We need to se– can you hear that?”

There was definitely a noise at the edge of his hearing, like someone talking from the far side of a thick wall. Hiccup stopped, frowning, then when Snotlout went to speak put a hand straight over his mouth to stop him.

Eyes flying wide, Elsa perked up. “Anna!”

Hiccup was barely even sure that it was a voice, and not his imagination, but Elsa darted around behind Barf and Belch and out of his sight. He broke into a run after her, fearing that she was about to disappear into the forest along the cliffline, but then skidded and almost tripped over himself as he realised she was kneeling behind Barf and Belch, apparently trying to lever them away from where they had fallen against the wall.

“What the–”

A hand appeared from the narrow, dark gap behind the Zippleback, and deposited just to one side the hatchling Terror that they had found during the day. Then Anna squirmed out, one hand first so that she could grab Elsa’s arm and drag herself, then the rest of her with a certain amount of huffing and muttering. She finally tumbled out, red-faced and breathless, and lay flat on her back on the ground for a few second before sitting up and grabbing Elsa into a hug.

Elsa murmured something in Marulosen, stroking her sister’s hair and visibly trying to hold back tears. Making a hushing sound, Anna held close for a moment, then scooped up her Terror and slipped it back into her top before getting back to her feet.

“There’s a sort of cave behind there,” she said, seeing the bewildered expression which Hiccup knew full well he was wearing. “But then Barf and Belch sort of… fell on it. I kind of smell like Zippleback gas. What were those things?”

“They’re called Speed Stingers,” said Hiccup.

“Suits them,” Anna replied, with a grimace. “Astrid heard something in the woods and told me to wake up the others, but before I could get any further than opening the flap on the guys’ tent there was this shriek and suddenly they were everywhere. Snotlout told me to get to the dragons with him, but we didn’t manage to take off.”

And Fishlegs had said that Astrid was with Stormfly. That, Hiccup could well believe, although he wished that they would return already. “All right, we need to get some sort of perimeter up. Should probably knock down the tent, it’s a lost cause,” he said, eyeing up the burning wool. “I’d rather not get the others set on fire while we’re at it. Fishlegs!”

He left Elsa and Anna together, trusting both of them more now that they knew where they other were, and hurried back to where Fishlegs was carefully making sure that each of the four stung figures was lying on their side. “Yes?” said Fishlegs, looking up.

“How much do you know about Speed Stinger venom?”

“It lasts less than a day,” said Fishlegs, with a vague shrug. “I – I know that if someone gets stung too many times, it can stop them breathing. But that happens right away,” he added quickly, as Hiccup went to turn towards the figures in the centre of the clearing. “That’s what it said, in my father’s Book. If they get stung repeatedly, they can die. But one sting, or sometimes two, that’s all that they usually do to a human.”

“And to a dragon?” said Hiccup. Fishlegs shrugged. Well, Hiccup supposed that he had a point in specifying humans, at least. Hiccup rubbed his eyes. “Right. Right. We need to wait this out until morning, and as soon as this venom starts wearing off we’re getting out of here.”

“You think everyone will be all right to fly?” said Fishlegs.

“If the dragons can fly, we can,” Hiccup said flatly. Hopefully the larger size of Hookfang, and Barf and Belch, would mean that they would be quicker to recover from the venom. He knew that was the case with the venom of other dragons, with adults more likely to recover quickly than children. “We’ll buddy-up those who haven’t been stung with those that have, if we need to.”

Behind him, the Speed Stinger shrieked its grating call again, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Something was still wrong. Something that he couldn’t put his finger on.

“Snotlout,” he said, “Speedifist. You’ve done bucket patrol on Berk. Knock down what’s left of that tent and get it damped down as much as you can. Earth or mud, not water, as much as possible. Fishlegs, Elsa, I need you to make up as many torches or campfires as you can from whatever we have left of wood or fabric, give us a proper perimeter. Anna, keep an eye on everyone who has been stung. Any change, anything at all, and you shout for the others, all right?”

“You’re planning something,” said Anna. Apparently, he was that transparent nowadays.

“I’m not going far. But I need to get into the air, see if I can see Astrid, see if I can see the Speed Stingers.”

“Be careful,” said Elsa.

He nodded, and did not say aloud that he was more worried about them. Fishlegs would know that Speed Stingers could not fly, but the others probably either did not know or were too flustered to recall it. If anyone was safe, it was going to be him. For now, though, he returned to the tent where he was supposed to have been sleeping, retrieved Toothless’s saddle and tail, and strapped it into place with his mind still half-elsewhere.

“Come on, Toothless,” he said, brushing off his hands and getting into the saddle. “Let’s find Astrid.”

 

 

 

 

 

The wind was not enough to completely blow the fear away, but it was at least an improvement. As soon as Hiccup cleared the trees and the low cliffs, the air seemed fresher in his lungs, cool and salty with the sea. He flew upwards in a slow spiral, scanning the darkness of the trees below them. From above, their campsite was bright against the ground, and he could see Fishlegs preparing the first torch a few feet away from the fire that Elsa was building back up again. At least, he presumed that it was Fishlegs making the torch; Elsa’s hair was a bright point in the darkness, dwindling slowly away, but the rest were barely visible. There did not seem to be any movement in the forest around them, and once Hiccup was as sure as he could be of that he continued on upwards.

There was something, nagging at the back of his mind. Something that was wrong; more wrong than the Speed Stingers even being here, on this island. The bloody swathe of the Terrible Terrors cut across his thoughts again, almost pushed aside by the fear for his friends, and he realised that must have been the Speed Stingers as well. It was enough to make his stomach lurch again, and when he looked at his right foot it was probably a good thing that he could not see the blood on his boot in the darkness.

A dragon’s shriek made him look up sharply, only to see a Nadder barrelling towards them out of nowhere in the darkness. With a yell, Hiccup wheeled Toothless away, rolling them head-over-tail backwards with a flick of the tail as Toothless’s muscles strained beneath him. He felt the building pressure in Toothless as well, the warning of fire, but as they pulled upright again he saw that it was Stormfly, her sides heaving, Astrid’s limp form gripped in her feet.

“Oh Thor,” said Hiccup.

Stormfly turned her head from side to side looking at him, then nudged closer, and Hiccup realised what she intended and guided Toothless underneath as slowly as he could. As they came level, Stormfly released Astrid, dropping her into Hiccup’s lap. He caught hold of her tightly, feeling the drop of the extra weight and frantic not to let her slip out of his hold. His hands slipped, and he saw slashes of blood across Astrid’s right bicep. A glance upwards told him that there was blood on Stormfly’s feet as well, and he realised that Stormfly must have grabbed her.

He should have bought rope, or something, but he would never have thought that Astrid had been stung as well. She was breathing shallowly – more shallowly than Ruffnut – as Toothless dipped down and they turned, carefully and levelly, back towards the campsite. Despite the itch in his skin to check whether she had been stung twice, whether that could be the reason, he concentrated on keeping his arms tightly around her, until they came back in to land once again.

There was almost a semi-circle of fire now, some of them not much more than piles of twigs but still alight, and the campsite seemed markedly brighter for it. Anna hurried over, looking shocked, as Hiccup landed.

“Is she–”

Now that they were landed, Hiccup had less concern about checking Astrid’s bare arms. There was a puncture mark on her left forearm, the skin hot and pink around it, and another almost at her shoulder. “Stung,” said Hiccup. He saw Anna’s eyes widen, and did his best to wrap his hand over the blood. “And I think Stormfly cut her arm when she got her out of here.”

He could not blame Stormfly for that, not in the slightest.

“We need to bandage… no, those were in the main tent as well,” he caught himself. “All right, whoever bought the oldest shirt, speak up now.”

Elsa appeared at his shoulder, and hissed at the sight of Astrid’s wounds. She reached out, and for a moment Hiccup thought that she would take Anna from him so that he could actually get out of the saddle, but instead she pushed his hands away and put her own over the cuts instead.

“Or I could ask Elsa, if my brain is working,” said Hiccup.

He heard the crackling of ice, and saw it glitter between Elsa’s fingers. Astrid’s arm jerked, and her breathing hitched, but as Elsa pulled her hands away again Astrid settled back into her sleep. Bloody flakes of ice were around the wounds, and Elsa did her best to brush them away, but making it look neater was the last thing that Hiccup was worried about right now.

“Can you?” he nodded vaguely to Astrid, and both Anna and Elsa looked at him blankly until Snotlout hurried over and stretched his arms out. Astrid was probably going to make him regret this later on, but Hiccup’s arms were starting to ache and he let Snotlout scoop Astrid up, one arm under her knees and one around her back. “Thanks, Snotlout.”

It might have said something about the situation that Snotlout’s face was pale in the darkness, his helmet still askew. He didn’t say anything as he carried Astrid over to beside the others.

Hiccup rubbed his face for a moment, taking a shaking breath. Six of them was technically just enough to fly the dragons, but there were still five of them stung and he was not sure that he would want to put two people who had been stung on Meatlug with Fishlegs.

Less than a day, Fishlegs had said. Hopefully that would mean that everyone would be awake before the middle of the day, although the night was so short that they were probably going to have to face hours of daylight. Speed Stingers were nocturnal, though, and he supposed that the short nights were at least in their favour on that front. Perhaps that was why they were moving so frantically, hunting in the short hours allotted to them.

Hunting.

Hiccup froze, then looked up, hands dropping away from his eyes. “Elsa,” he said.

“Yes?”

“The Terrors. They had been _hunted_ ,” he said, looking at her. “A mid-sized animal, fast enough to catch Terrors. It has to be the Speed Stingers.”

Elsa had almost certainly not heard of them until now, of course, but she was the one who had seen the Terrors, what had been done. She looked at him for a few long seconds, then nodded.

“But that was… that was _gorging_ ,” said Hiccup. It reminded him of nothing so much as Slaughter Day, when the ale and the mead flowed freely and there was more food than Berk had seen for moons. In Berk, though, there were enough people who kept their wits about them and used up everything, to ensure that nothing went to waste. “This island isn’t big enough for them to eat like that, it… it was desperate.”

Other than the Terrible Terrors that Anna had found, Hiccup had not even seen that many. There had been flocks of them when he had first scoped this place out. The whole reason that he had chosen this island was that it had plenty of dragons, and that it was peaceful.

“They shouldn’t be here,” he said, as it fell into place. The massacre of Terrors, clearly the first of its sort or Hiccup would have seen the corpses earlier. The lack of any signs at all when Hiccup had checked on the island. The shores of this island would be bad for fishing, not like the salmon-suitable rivers that he had seen on the island to the north.

“Er, Hiccup?” said Fishlegs. “That’s kind of harsh…”

“No, they literally shouldn’t be here,” said Hiccup. He dismounted, and waved to the island around them. “This place isn’t big enough to support a pack of dragons of that size. Not off the land. They must not be native to this island, they must be from somewhere else.”

Fishlegs frowned. “Then how did they get here?”

With dragons that could not fly, that was the problem. Humans could get between islands using boats, but he doubted that anyone would be foolish enough to try to transport Speed Stingers that way. And they must have made it here within the last moon, at the most.

It was Elsa who broke the silence. “It was me,” she said.

Hiccup looked round, frowning. There was a look of muted horror on Elsa’s face, pain in her eyes, as everyone seemed to be turning to face her. “What?”

“My ice. The bay at Arendelle, it froze. And you said that the sea froze at Berk,” she said, looking at Fishlegs and Snotlout. They both had that look of a deer before a hunter, bewilderment and fear together, and her lips pressed together before her gaze snapped back to Hiccup. “Could it have done the same here?”

“A – a bridge?” It was not unheard of, in the winter, for the sea to freeze so completely that there were floes almost filling the sea. Supposedly, in cold years of the past, it had been possible to trek between islands, but Hiccup had always written them off as stories and nothing more. “The sea between here and the northern island is pretty still… I guess…”

“Then it was me,” said Elsa. Her hand curled into a fist, and she shook her head with something close to disgust curling her lip.  “I bought them here.”

“Don’t,” said Hiccup. “If they were stupid enough to go island-hopping, that is their own fault.” His hand rested on Toothless’s back; he would like to think that Toothless would be smarter than to go off to some unknown place in unseasonal weather. Most of Arendelle, and even Berk, had seemed to be sensible enough to simply hunker down and let it pass. “But that at least gives us an answer. Two, actually – they have to come from the island just north of here.”

“Great,” said Snotlout, “good work there, Hiccup. At least we know _where_ the murderous psycho dragons came from. And in the morning, we can say good riddance to them.”

“We can’t leave them here.” Hiccup shook his head. “They’ve already killed the Terrors on the island. At best, they’ll end up starving themselves.”

“That’s the best?” said Speedifist, looking uncomfortable. She had retrieved her axe while Hiccup was in the air, and not put it down since he had landed.

Snotlout rolled his eyes. “Sounds good to _me_.”

“At worst,” Hiccup addressed Fishlegs and Speedifist, “the other dragons will get defensive, and there’ll be fighting. Then you’ll get deaths on both sides.”

“Is there any way we could… take them back?” said Anna. She pointed over her shoulder with her thumb; it was in completely the wrong direction for the larger island, but he was pretty sure that was what she meant anyway. “If they don’t belong here, I mean… while they’re asleep or something?”

“It would depend how deeply they slept,” said Hiccup, trying to figure out the logistics in his head. They did not breathe fire, which might make nets a possibility, but their claws and tail would still prove an issue. He gestured to Toothless, Stormfly and Meatlug. “And we couldn’t do it with just these guys, anyway. It would be the ideal, but… I don’t know it we could.”

“Risking my life over dragons that attacked us and,” Snotlout pointed vehemently at the burning remains of their larger tent, “could have gotten us _killed_? Does not sound like fun to me. Count me out.”

“Our first priority is getting us all out of here in one piece,” said Hiccup firmly, before Snotlout could really get going. “If we need to, we’ll get back to Berk, and I’ll talk to my father to come up with a plan for this.”

“Or,” said Elsa slowly, waiting for Hiccup to look round again. She had taken Anna’s hand. “I can make a new bridge. For them.”

It was a lot more than a gauntlet. Hiccup went to speak, then caught himself as he realised that everyone was watching them still. All right, so that was still only three people beside Anna, but he could see the way that Elsa’s hand was trembling in Anna’s hold. He walked closer to them both, and lowered his voice.

“It’s all right,” he said softly. “What happened was an accident. You don’t have to… somehow make up for it, or anything like that.”

“If I did it once, then I can do it again,” said Elsa. “It is not fair for them, for the other dragons. It is not good to be trapped away from home,” she said, voice faltering.

“You’re sure?” he said, one last time.

Elsa nodded.

With a new ice bridge back to the larger island, yes, it sounded like it could be done. The problem would be persuading – or perhaps ‘persuading’ in the sense that Astrid might use the term – the Speed Stingers to go back to the home island again. They might go willingly; Hiccup hoped that they would, that they would want desperately to get to that home. But he did not exactly trust them to do the most sensible thing, and he would admit that he could see why they would not want to step out onto an ice bridge again if the last one had stranded them here.

Hiccup took a few deep breaths, getting his head straight. He had been telling Snotlout the truth; their safety was the first priority. Besides, it would be easier with more of them. But he did not want to expose the dragons to the Speed Stingers again, not with the risk that they could be stung.

“We might need a way to drive them towards the ice bridge,” he said. “We can’t be sure that they’ll realise that we’re trying to help.”

Helping them, after all of this, might have seemed strange. But it was the only thing that Hiccup could accept, the only _right_ thing.

“Gronckles,” said Speedifist.

He frowned.

Speedifist hugged her axe closer to her chest. In Arendelle, they had fabric toys stuffed with cloth, but in Berk children generally went from clubs or cudgels to edged weapons when it came to safety blankets. “They couldn’t get Meatlug. The other Gronckles should be just as tough, right?”

“They’ve got the strongest hide of any species that comes to Berk,” said Fishlegs, with a slow shrug and more of a question than a statement to his voice.

And without meaning any offence to Meatlug, Gronckles were not exactly the fastest of dragons, and one of the few things that Vikings had ever established about Speed Stingers was that they were some of the fastest dragons in existence. Given the speed that Toothless had, Hiccup could understand how he had managed to climb out of reach, and Stormfly would have reacted immediately to the warning that Astrid gave. But if Hookfang had been caught, and Barf and Belch, then there was no way that Meatlug would have been able to escape them on speed alone. It had to be the strength of her hide.

“Gronckles, then,” Hiccup said. He looked around them one last time. “And it’s a plan. Tomorrow during the day, we prepare. We find some of the wild Gronckles to help us. And come night fall, as soon as the Speed Stingers are awake, I want us to be getting them off this island and back where they belong.”

“So now we just… wait?” said Fishlegs.

In some ways, yes, but Hiccup knew that the waiting could be the worst part. “We prepare,” he said firmly. Even if it meant finding essentially useless tasks to keep them busy, he did not want anyone to be left to fret. Not now. “And we strengthen ourselves.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Speed Stingers first appear in the Dragons episode called - I'm not kidding - _Frozen_. In that episode, they are capable of piercing a Gronckle's hide, but I've changed that for plot-necessary reasons.


	24. Chapter 24

It was Stormfly, in the end, who gave them the answer for the Speed Stinger with the crippled leg. Hiccup was still wondering what to do with it, whether they should put it out of its misery or not after everything that it had done to them, but she took the decision out of her hands. Before Hiccup could react, she stalked around the back of the tent, he heard the whistle of her spines being flung and the Speed Stinger’s shriek, and he ran after her just in time to see her take its neck in her mouth and snap it like a stick. Its tail was pinned to the ground by her spines, but at last it lay still, and at least, he supposed, it had been over in an instant.

It did not stop him from feeling sick.

Dawn came mercifully quickly. Once it had, Hiccup set those who were still awake to collecting wood again, and with Elsa pushed through the remnants of the large tent to see what was salvageable. Nothing but metal really remained; Barf and Belch’s gas was insidious, and the fire had snuck into every crevice. Hiccup was only grateful that nobody had been inside, and that they had not left any notes or their copies of the Book of Dragons in there.

Elsa volunteered to gather some food, at least enough to see them through the day or give them a little extra strength come evening. It was undoubtedly a good idea; Hiccup sent Speedifist with her for protection, and Fishlegs for an extra pair of hands. When she tried to take Anna instead, he pointed out that Anna of all of them knew least about edible plants, and promised that Anna would be safe at the camp.

After a pained hesitation, Elsa agreed, and while Hiccup explained the situation to Anna the three of them moved off.

It was Ruffnut who moved first, managing a groan around the middle of the day that made Snotlout shriek and bolt away. Hiccup hurried over to the impromptu shelter from the sun that they had made out of what remained of the tents, as Ruffnut managed to open her eyes and pull a face at him with another groan.

“Ruffnut!” said Hiccup, relief flooding his voice. “It’s all right. You’re going to be all right.”

“Tuuuuuuuuh,” said Ruffnut. He looked at her blankly. Her fingers, which had been curled almost into a fist, straightened slightly. “Tuuuhnuuuuuh.”

“Tuffnut?” Hiccup guessed. From the widening of Ruffnut’s eyes and the twitch of her chin he guessed that he was right. “He’s right behind you. He was stung as well, but if you’re coming round then everybody else shouldn’t be far behind.”

Ruffnut moaned incoherently, drool running out of the side of her mouth as it curled up a fraction, then her whole body jerked. Hiccup jumped, feeling a stab of panic again. Ruffnut’s face twitched, mostly eyebrow and nose, and her eyes moved to her right, upwards, as she jerked again. Without shock clouding his eyes, it looked more deliberate, and Hiccup glanced past Ruffnut to remember that it was, of course, Tuffnut behind her.

“You want to see him?”

“Yuuuuh,” she said.

Well, if it helped, it helped, and it didn’t look as if it could exactly hurt. “All right, hang on,” said Hiccup. “This might not be graceful. Anna, a hand?”

Anna trotted over from where she had been refilling their water, and together they managed to get Ruffnut over onto her other side. There was a certain amount of flopping of limbs, and Anna had to carefully rearrange Ruffnut’s hair so that the braids would not be uncomfortable to lie on – she rolled her eyes when Hiccup looked blankly at her – but they managed to get Ruffnut on her side and facing her brother. After a moment’s pause, Anna took Ruffnut’s left hand and rested it over Tuffnut’s right.

“Tuuuuuuh,” said Ruffnut happily.

Tuffnut’s eyes flickered, then he moaned vaguely back. With a delighted grunt, Ruffnut’s body jerked again, this time in Tuffnut’s direction.

“It’s all right,” Hiccup said quickly, putting his hand back down over theirs. “He’ll probably wake up soon. Hopefully you’ll all be up before nightfall. You just wait for each other, yeah?”

“Yuuuuuh,” she said. Tuffnut grunted.

“Remarkable,” said Hiccup, straightening up and brushing off his hands. “They’re just as coherent as usual.”

He looked along the line, but there was no sign of movement from Wartihog or Clueless, or Astrid at the end with one of her arms stretched out into the sun. Walking across, Hiccup tucked her arm back into the shade where it would not burn, and found himself looking too long at the frozen wounds on her bicep. This was supposed to have been a brief, safe introduction to dragons, and instead he had managed to risk them all.

They were all still breathing, though, and that was the most important thing. And they had something roughly resembling a plan.

It got harder as time slipped past noon, and though Ruffnut and Tuffnut started twitching more determinedly, and making sounds that were almost approaching actual words to each other, the day was tarrying before Wartihog and Clueless started to grunt and twitch as well, and there was still no sign of movement from Astrid. Hiccup managed to use up more of the time by getting everyone to establish a defensible half-circle around one of the caves instead, once they had established that there was not even the smallest hole that could risk letting through a Speed Stinger. If anyone had not yet stirred, or was not up to fighting, that was where they would have to stay.

Finally, the twins were the first to lurch upright, largely climbing up each other and swaying like sailors but managing it. Ruffnut even had the presence of mind and use of her arms to wipe the drool off her chin.

“Groncklesh?” slurred Tuffnut, in what might have been a hopeful tone of voice.

Hiccup hesitated, wondering which part of Tuffnut’s full, if unspoken, question he should respond to first. “Yes, the plan is to find some Gronckles,” he said, “but I’m not sure that you’re in a fit state to come with us.”

Ruffnut pointed towards the sky, or at least tried to as her arm threatened to sway straight back down again. Tuffnut grabbed her forearm to support it, and between the two of them they manage to point upwards.

“Nuh time,” said Ruffnut, still sounding as if she were speaking through a mouthful of mashed turnip. “Stooooooooorm.”

A glance at the sky told him that she was right. Dark clouds were rolling in on the westerly wind, and at the rate they were moving they were going to at least halve the daylight that remained. Hiccup swallowed. He needed enough people to ensure that the Gronckles would join them in some numbers, but he had to make sure that the people here were protected. And they had to make sure that the ice bridge was built in time.

The world felt like a raised knife, ready to fall, and all that was left now was to guide its direction.

“All right, gang,” he said. “Everyone who can’t walk yet is going into the cave. Snotlout, Speedifist, I’m leaving you here to guard them. You’ll–”

Speedifist looked up sharply. “The Gronckles were my idea. I should go with you.”

A dozen responses came to the tip of his tongue, a fair number of them concerning whether she would be able to handle dealing with unfamiliar Gronckles when it came to the crisis point. But perhaps befriending Gronckles would be easier than potentially fighting Speed Stingers. And, more than that, there was steel in her eyes.

The light, glinting on the knife’s edge.

“All right. Snotlout, Anna, you’ll be here. We’ll be sending Stormfly back with you as soon as we’ve found the Gronckles we need. The plan is to take the Speed Stingers up the coast, but just in case, you need to defend that cave. The wood is for fires, and you’ll get pick of the weapons.” None of the close-quarters weapons that they had could possibly be suitable against the Speed Stingers, after all. “Elsa, you’re with me.” There was still conflict in her eyes, doubtless at being separated from Anna, but he could almost read in her eyes that _at least it was him_. “Fishlegs, Speedifist, you’re teaming up with Ruffnut and Tuffnut for the flight out to the Gronckles. Find the biggest group that you can, land, and set to making friends. Elsa and I will join you as soon as we can. Everyone clear?”

A mixture of nods and muttered assents answered him, and he wondered whether he should repeat it for roaring approval like he had heard his father do. But that was not going to work for him. He nodded, and wrapped his hand around the safety ring on Toothless’s saddle.

“Then let’s go.”

And the knife fell.

 

 

 

 

 

It started raining as he and Elsa shot north, pressed close and low to Toothless. Her arms were tight and cold around his waist, and he could feel her pressing her cheek against his back. Without even looking, he knew that she was nervous, that the thought of using her magic was probably proving as difficult for her as it ever had. Because he was asking for something _huge_ from her, literally and otherwise, the construction of an ice bridge back to the northern island that might or might not even be visible with the fast-approaching storm.

As they reached the northern shore, a raggedly rocky beach, Hiccup slowed them down and both of them sat up. “Do you want to land?” said Hiccup, glancing over his shoulder. Elsa nodded, lips pressed tightly together.

The rocks crunched beneath their feet as they both slipped out of Toothless’s saddle. Elsa rubbed her ribs as she walked towards the shore, and Hiccup let her stand in silence for a moment as she looked out over the calm sea.

“I tried to keep it in,” she said, finally. “For so long.” She squeezed her eyes closed again, pain on her features, but as Hiccup stepped closer she looked up sharply, and he fell still again.

“Sorry,” he said.

Elsa shook her head. “It is… this is large. I must break through this…” words failed her again. “I must let it go.”

The air became cold around them. Hiccup gave Elsa her distance as she closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, glittering points of ice appearing in her hair. The tide flowed in, but as Elsa stepped forwards the edge of it froze beneath her feet. She took another step, and the water became ice, white and ragged but undeniable, and Elsa gave a shuddering laugh at the sight of it.

“All right,” she said quietly. She bent down and took off her boots, throwing them over to Hiccup.

“What the–” he caught one boot, but missed the other and had to pick it up off the sand. “Elsa?”

“I am not sure if the ice…” she trailed off with a shrug. They did not have words, yet, for what the ice did to fabric. It would probably be worth establishing them. Before Hiccup could respond, she undid the belt of her dress, and Hiccup spluttered as he realised what she meant.

“Woah! I, I’m sure you’ll be fine,” he said. “I can’t really…”

“Don’t worry,” said Elsa, with a wry edge in her voice. She slipped off the dress to reveal her underclothes, and Hiccup felt himself turn red as he fixed his gaze firmly on her feet. A light linen tunic and underpants, new though they may have actually been this time, hardly replaced a dress. “I am not planning on practicing my unholy wildling charms.”

That was enough to make him chuckle raggedly as she tossed her dress back onto the beach as well. The air was cold enough now to start making the hairs on Hiccup’s arms stand on end, but it was still, even the sea growing calmer beneath its touch. Elsa took a third step, and a fourth, and the ice spread out beneath her feet in a widening semi-circle.

It was _working_.

But it would be too slow. They did not have time for Elsa to walk to the northern island and back; it was visible on the horizon, but would have taken the day. He debated whether he should say to Elsa, whether it would be worse to tell her that they needed more, when she raised her hands to her sides and clenched her fists.

The area on which she stood squared off, and rails rose from the sides to enclose it. These were less like the tree-like forms that everything on the North Mountain had been; they had the look of a balustrade, slender algiz shapes with their three branches supporting an upper railing. The floor turned smooth and blue, a good five or six yards across.

Elsa took a huge breath, hanging her head for a moment, then looked up and fixed her eyes on the distant island.

“Time to see what I can do,” she said.

Her next step forwards was more like a lunge, dropping her weight down. Both of her arms swung through, palms forwards, and the ice beneath her feet shot onwards in a glittering stream, pouring from her hands in a swell of blue-white light.

The floor on which she stood seemed to unfold, so bright at first that Hiccup could hardly look at it, then as the glare followed the ice along the surface of the sea he saw that it was the same, a smooth floor and railed sides, stretching out like the most enormous bridge he had ever seen.

When he had said _bridge_ , he had not expected it to be quite this literal.

He realised that Elsa had closed her eyes, head still bowed and shoulders shaking as her magic pushed on. It crackled and glittered in the air, and Hiccup felt as if he could barely breathe in amazement, in awe, at the sight of it pressing out into the distance. The sound faded, until there was just the lap of the waves against the edges of the bridge, and Elsa’s laboured breathing.

Finally, the light in the distance winked out, and Elsa drew her hands back in to her chest as she straightened up. Hiccup hurried over, grabbing her dress as he did so. Sweat was trickling down her forehead, and she was shaking, but there was a flush in her cheeks and a trembling smile.

“Elsa? Elsa, are you all right?”

Her eyes moved back to him, and she nodded unsteadily, but her smile grew. “Yes,” she said, with a glance out at the bridge again that lasted only for a moment. Her voice was light, perhaps almost exuberant. “I feel… free.”

What clothes she was still were strung with ice, just a fine dusting that glittered with each breath that she took. Hiccup hastily handed her dress to her again. “Do you think it went all the way?”

“I felt it,” said Elsa, but she did at least acquiesce and take the dress back from him, wrapping it around herself. “I felt the ice, I…” her voice lost its edge, and fell again as she pressed her lips together for a moment. “That sounds strange,” she said aloud.

“I’ve heard stranger. At least I can trust what you say to be true.” Which was more than could be said for various of his friends, not least the twins. “Besides, what I’ve said about dragons… that’s been pretty strange as well.”

There had not been a question in her voice, though; it had been more of a realisation, and Hiccup did not know what to say other than to offer some jest again. Elsa wrapped her dress around herself and tied the belt almost sharply around her waist again, then looked over her bridge wistfully. She wiped her brow with the back of her hand.

“I felt the ice reach the shore,” she said finally. “It felt… different, to the sea. It is there.”

“Thank you,” said Hiccup. He took hold of Elsa’s hand, and though her skin was damp and she was shaking, her grip was firm in return. “We couldn’t do this without that bridge.”

“We still need Gronckles,” Elsa replied.

On that point, she was absolutely correct. It was all very well having the bridge in place if the Speed Stingers did not use it, and Hiccup did not have to ask in order to suspect that even Elsa did not know how long the bridge would stay in place.

“All right. Gronckles it is.”

 

 

 

 

 

It did not take long to find the others, making their way through a group of Gronckles with the dragon nip that had been in Stormfly’s saddlebags and not a lot else. Hiccup was relieved to see that they were having some success, even if the twins were mostly leaning against the Gronckles they were supposed to be making an alliance with.

The sky started to darken above them, and he fought the urge to keep looking up and focussed on the task at hand. The dragon nip quickly ran out, but then it was back to basics, rubbing snouts and scratching behind ears, and even Speedifist was moving from Gronckle to Gronckle, the nervousness about her most likely just from the Speed Stingers that they were facing. Meatlug was also grunting her way around, and Hiccup hoped he wasn’t being too absurd when he caught himself thinking of her as an ambassador for them.

“Hiccup…” said Fishlegs, worry in his voice.

Hiccup looked up at the sky again, in time to see lightning flash in the distance. Rain was shading the sky, a shimmering veil, and it was only seconds before thunder rumbled as well.

“I see it, Fishlegs. All right, gang,” he raised his voice as little as he could get away with to get the attention of the others. “Time’s up. We need to get into the air and start sweeping south to north.”

He hoped that the Gronckles would trust them enough to follow. He was less concerned about them being willing to take on the Speed Stingers; all dragons were territorial, that was something that Vikings had known about dragons from the beginning. And Gronckles had the hides to handle the stings, whether they knew it or not. Toothless would be the only non-Gronckle among them, and Hiccup knew that he would have to stay higher as a result, but he was not going to let this happen without him.

They had rope for bridles, and found Gronckles willing to accept them. Hiccup’s hands were shaking as he checked the knots for Speedifist and helped her into place on the Gronckle’s back.

“Looking forward to flying solo?” he said, and almost winced at the nervousness he could hear in his voice. He really hoped it was not too obvious to anyone else.

Speedifist smiled uncertainly, though her voice came out as a fairly smooth lie. “Of course.” She patted the side of the Gronckle she was on, green-tinged brown with a habit of letting its tongue loll out the side of its mouth. “Good to get some solo Gronckle experience.”

“Well, it’s a bit ahead of schedule,” said Hiccup, taking a step back and letting the Gronckle shift and get used to the weight on its back. “But you’ve been doing great. About time for a night flight.”

The effects of the venom still lingered when it came to the twins. Ruffnut seemed to be regaining use of her arms first, while Tuffnut was doing better with his legs, but they had produced a vehement, if slurred, argument that they should be allowed to ride one of the Gronckles together. They ended up tied to each other as well as to the Gronckle, but Hiccup simply decided to keep an eye on them as they went along. With Fishlegs on Meatlug’s back, and Elsa also in place, there was nothing else that they could do but head towards the southern coast.

Hiccup kept to the front of the group, with Fishlegs and Meatlug at his left hand. By the blessing of one or another of the gods, the Gronckles were following them as well, over a dozen of them without riders as well as the ones with people on their backs.

The rain rolled in just as they reached the southern shore of the island. It soaked Hiccup through within moments, and impeded their vision, but at least it did not make it completely impossible to see. There were cliffs in the limestone, largest among the south-western cliffs, and Hiccup suspected the Speed Stingers would be there. Out of the sun, and less likely to be disturbed.

He looked over to Elsa as the rain began, but she showed no sign of concern for the rain and he hoped that meant that the ice bridge would last through it. As they approached the largest of the caves, however, Hiccup cursed the growing gloom and raised a hand to call a halt to them all. There was some swearing behind him, but it sounded like the twins and there was no screaming that anyone had fallen off. For now, therefore, it was not the problem.

Even facing southwest, the way that should have caught whatever remained of the sun, the cave was an inky black. Which only made it more perfect for the Speed Stingers, no doubt.

He had to figure out a way to establish if the Speed Stingers were in the cave at all. He waved for the Gronckles to swing round to the southern side of the cave, fighting for time to think, only for Toothless to shriek out from beneath him.

It was so high that Hiccup could barely hear it, a harsh-edged sound more like the noise that he made when diving than anything that Hiccup had ever heard come out of his mouth. Hiccup clapped one hand over his ear, gripping Toothless’s saddle with the other, and tried not to feel it rattling in his cheekbones.

“What was _that_?” shouted Ruffnut, the words much less slurred than she had been even when they started meeting with the Gronckles.

He glared at her, but mostly because he did not have an answer. “Come on, bud,” he said to Toothless, more quietly. A low growl was building deep in Toothless’s chest, more tangible than audible, and his eyes remained fixed on the cave entrance. “What are you doing?”

There was a warning of only a few heartbeats, feeling Toothless drawing in his breath and hearing the high preparatory sound, and all that Hiccup could do was open his mouth and hold on tightly before Toothless fired, all of his power behind the rippling purple light.

Inside the cave, the Speed Stingers screamed, a chorus of sounds that seemed to run blades down his spine. Where the fire struck one of the boulders in the cave, it left a light behind, just enough to see the darting shadows of the Speed Stingers are they rose to their feet and started rushing about.

It was the first time that Hiccup had seen them in motion. They were so fast that he could barely fix his eyes upon them, so fast that he was amazed that even Toothless had been able to keep away from them on the ground. They were silver-green, with no wings and short forearms, and deep mouths with which they screamed at him. The screams managed to feel _personal_.

“Stay high!” he called to the other riders, as one of the Speed Stingers leapt into the air, and Toothless reared back with a snarl. “And hold some of your fire in reserve – we need to get them all the way to the north end of the island!”

The last thing that he needed was them running out of shots before they even got halfway there. Toothless roared down at the Speed Stingers, and they shrieked back, a sound too high to be called roaring in return. One of them leapt up onto a high boulder on the beach and leapt out at Toothless, but Hiccup pulled them away with plenty of room to spare.

Meatlug fired at the southern side of the Speed Stinger group, and they responded with a sway along the beach, like a flock of birds moving away from passing humans. But there was no sign of bolting. _Predators_ , Hiccup realised, and could have kicked himself. Not prey. This was not going to be like hunting wild boar.

“You want prey?” he muttered to himself, fixing his eyes on the largest of the Speed Stingers. It had red stripes, and the fin atop its head was red rather than the green of all of the others. In what way it was different, he was not wholly sure, but he had his suspicions. “Fine. You’ve got prey.”

He dove down. The tip of Toothless’s wing almost touched the sand, and the Speed Stingers were already lunging for them, following them along the beach, as they rolled back upright and cut upwards once again. Their screaming echoed in Hiccup’s ears, and the other riders might have been shouting at him as well as they followed, but all that he could do was glance over his shoulder to be sure that the others were following the Speed Stingers.

He hoped that they would understand, that all they needed to do was keep the pack together, and stop any stragglers. All that he could do now was trust Toothless.

That, at least, he could do.

Someone screamed his name in disbelief as he dropped Toothless down to within a few yards of the stony beach. He set his eyes north, and _flew_.

The shrieks of the Speed Stingers were enough to tell him that they were not far behind, though he was not sure whether the clattering that he heard was their feet on the ground, or stones dislodged by the force of Toothless’s wings, or just the rattling sound of fear inside his own head.

The beach turned to hills became forest, and Toothless shot up it with the Speed Stingers still calling for blood behind him. The trees on this side of the forest were just sparse enough, and Toothless went _between_ them, dodging through the shadows so fast that Hiccup could not even think, just feel Toothless’s body and move the tail to match, trees flashing through around them and the occasional flash of pale scales. He pressed himself to Toothless’s back, set his eyes on the north, and they cut back and forth between the trunks faster than breath.

A cut, a turn, a sharp dodge between two trees with wings snapping furled tight to roll through the narrow gap, so close that Hiccup might have touched the ground. The Speed Stingers tried to hunt them, as if they were a boar or a yak that could be herded, but Toothless was too smart – and it was Toothless, Hiccup could only follow like an extension of his muscles and was not guiding at all – and cut back and forth without ever being caught, though Hiccup heard shrieks in the night and saw flicker after flicker of the Speed Stingers.

There was no time to think. He followed Toothless, trusted him to fly so close that more than once he felt the stab of fear, saw the Speed Stingers with their mouths wide and their stings poised, but they never struck, never came close enough to do so.

The trees thickened, then suddenly they were gone, and Toothless burst out onto the northern shores once again. The rain smacked down onto him again, and lightning flashed and thunder rumbled again as Toothless whirled and cut high into the air before turning to scream his defiance at the Speed Stingers that cut out from the trees below to bark their anger back.

Even in the dark and the rain, the ice bridge was visible, shining pale in the darkness and not all that far away. From where they hovered, Hiccup could see the others on their Gronckles pressed hard to even come close to keeping up, fanned out in the air but still firing, here and there. He hoped that they had all of the Speed Stingers together still.

“Nearly there,” he said to Toothless. He could feel the Night Fury’s heavy breathing, the tension in his muscles from the drawn-out chase compared to his usual viciously-fast bursts.

He could see the Speed Stingers more clearly now, as the red-marked one looked at him with a chillingly level gaze. There were perhaps two dozen of them, all close in size, and he suspected that they were only a part of a larger pack from their home island. For right now, though, all that he could worry about was getting them back to the northern island, and to do that he had to keep them angry.

“Goose or gander,” he muttered to himself, and nudged Toothless with his knee. “Bud, fire!”

The fireball hit the rock almost at the feet of the leader, spraying shards of stone into the air and sending the Speed Stingers bolting left and right. The red-marked one held its ground, though, even with blood dripping from its nose, and set its eyes right on Hiccup’s. It gave the eerie impression that it knew _exactly_ who had given the order that time.

“Then come and get me!” Hiccup shouted, and they wheeled round in the air and shot towards the bridge.

This time he did glance over his shoulder, and as much as it was a good thing that the Speed Stingers were chasing him, turning around to see at least a score of furious dragons right on Toothless’s tail was not the image that he needed. He could feel the drag of Toothless’s tailfin on the air, the fabric and metal struggling to keep up with Night Fury flesh and bone, and just hoped that it would be enough as the Speed Stingers snapped and snarled right behind them.

With the rain closing in, he could not see the island for which they were aiming, just the gleaming bridge and the dark sea around it. The horizon was an indistinct blur, as water dripped down his face and got in his eyes, and there were no trees here to hinder them but no way to bring to bear Toothless’s agility. He pressed himself as tight to Toothless’s back as he could go, feeling the pluck of the wind, even though the position was starting to make his hips ache. If he squinted, he thought that he could see the murky smudge of land for which they were aiming, and despite the chase behind him he felt a surge of hope.

The first blow was against Toothless’s tailfin. He felt it, not just in the slam that travelled all the way up the metal but in the way that Toothless bucked beneath him, losing his steady speed. It was only for an instant, but that was enough, and there was a shriek from the Speed Stingers behind them before Toothless screamed, angry and shocked and fearful all at once, and lurched in the air so that he almost left the line of the bridge altogether.

Toothless’s wings pounded on the air, and they surged forwards again, breaking free of the scrabbling pack pursuing them, but Hiccup could already feel the strength leaking away, the muscles beneath him going slack, and panic crested high and blinding-white inside him as he realised they had nowhere to go but onto the bridge.

They had no option. All of Toothless’s power left him, and his wings sagged, sending them tumbling gracelessly out of the air and slamming them into the ice. It cracked from their impact, and Hiccup clung on with all his might as the force tried to throw him from the saddle, foot slipping free of the stirrup but prosthetic managing to stay on.

Ice flew as they skidded down the surface of the bridge, turning, leaving an ugly scour in their wake. The Speed Stingers were close, too close, and Hiccup reached for his knife even as he knew that he could do nothing against them, only for one of the Gronckles to pull up overhead, a look of intent focus on its face, and for the person above to drop down.

“No!” Hiccup shouted, because they should stay up there, that was the only chance they had, but Elsa landed on her feet in front of him, dress fluttering down beside her. Ice ran in ridges down her arms, and she bought with her a wave of cold that turned the rain to hail around them.

Ice shot from her left hand like a rod, as fast as a blink, and trailing from it was a translucent sheet of ice as fine as fabric. Elsa spun, and the ice spread, wrapping up and around as she raised her arm so that it formed a cone-like twist around them.

One of the Speed Stingers slammed into the ice, but was sent staggering back as not even a crack appeared. It hissed at them, the sound muted, and stabbed with its sting. Still nothing.

Hiccup dropped to his knees beside Toothless, panting for breath.

“Are you all right?” said Elsa. “I saw them reach you. You fell…”

“I think Toothless got stung,” said Hiccup. He turned around, and had to crawl over to Toothless’s tail to see it. In the dim light, it was hard to see, but there was a distinct scrape along the surface of the membrane, and Hiccup supposed he had to count himself grateful that it had not punctured the membrane altogether. “Yeah. He got hit. Oh, bud.” He ran a hand over Toothless’s tail. “You flew well.”

Toothless rumbled, deep in his throat.

The Speed Stingers were circling them now, jabbing at the ice here and there with sounds that rang through. The other Gronckles were following steadily along the bridge, and some of the Speed Stingers would occasionally look over and bark, but the red-marked one stood still and stared at Hiccup through the ice. Thunder rumbled above them, and lightning flashed, reflected in dozens of reptilian eyes in the darkness.

“You know, I think that one’s really got it in for me,” he said.

“Why are they not going to the island?”

The red-marked one stepped forward, and its stinger slammed into the ice, hard enough to make Hiccup jump. It was not that much larger than the others, but the extra power in it was tangible. “They weren’t running away from you guys,” said Hiccup. “They were chasing me. And now they think they’ve caught me.”

Elsa did not reply, and Hiccup did not go on to add the obvious point that they would have caught him, had it not been for her. She was looking at the red-marked stinger thoughtfully, brow slightly furrowed, then she looked down at her hands again. The rod of ice had vanished, leaving her hands free, but as she clenched them into fists light swelled in them again, rolling down over her skin as she flattened out her palm.

This time, she wore the twin chainmail mitons, shimmering blue and in the same fine rings as the one from before. It seemed absurdly long ago to have been just the previous night.

The red-marked Speed Stinger cocked its head, narrowed its eyes, and struck again.

Hiccup let out a strangled cry as the stinger came cleanly through the ice, only to realise that it could not have broken without any shards. Even the Speed Stinger looked surprised for an instant, eyes widening, before Elsa stepped up and simply _grabbed_ the sting in one ice-covered hand. Her muscles tightened as the Speed Stinger tried to pull it back, and she braced the other hand on the inside of the icy cone, but her grip held and this time the Speed Stinger’s bark had more of an edge to it than before.

Elsa squeezed, with a grinding sound of ice on ice, and the Speed Stinger screamed high and harsh and still, still, deep down Hiccup felt a twinge of pity for it. Then she released it, and the Speed Stinger staggered back, the rest of the pack immediately flocking around it on the northern side of the bridge from the ice.

Elsa muttered something that sounded like Marulosen, then raised her hands to shoulder height before flicking them down.

The ice crashed down around them, flashing into powder-fine snow with a shattering sound so loud that it rang in Hiccup’s ears. As the cold air and the rain hit him again, he wondered what madness had seized Elsa to take down the one protection that they had, but then she made a slashing gesture with her arm and a semi-circle of spikes rose into the air, stabbing out towards the Speed Stingers without ever hitting them, sending them skittering away.

The red-marked Speed Stinger gave a cry, even as it turned to run. The others fled after it, and then they were gone, the only sound the thudding rain on the sea and the scraping of their claws as they vanished off along what remained of the bridge.

Moments later, the other Gronckles caught up, and Meatlug came in to land carefully on the ice beside them. “What happened?” said Fishlegs.

Hiccup rubbed his forehead. “I barely know where to begin.”

Wrapping her dress back on again and tying it securely, Elsa turned and with a gentle wave severed the bridge. The far side of it began to roll back, melting away into the water once again. Well, Hiccup supposed, that was one option.

Toothless assented, with something of a scowl, to being carried back to the island by one of the Gronckles. Hiccup flew alongside him, and tried not to find it just a little bit amusing how annoyed he looked by the whole affair. By the time that they reached the camp, Toothless was already starting to twitch his tail and open his mouth again, and it seemed that a scratch on a dragon wore off a whole lot faster than a full-blown sting on a human.

“Did it work?” called Snotlout as soon as he saw Hiccup, ignoring the dozen or more Gronckles now setting down around their campsite to sniff everything.

Hiccup climbed down stiffly from the Gronckle’s back, and crossed to where Toothless had been gently set down on the grass just outside the cave. “Yes,” he said. “They’re gone. Nothing came through here, did it?”

For a moment, Snotlout had that look in his eye as if he was thinking of magic up some grand heroic tale, then his gaze flickered around their destroyed campsite, and everything that had gone wrong. “No,” he said. “It was all quiet here.”

“Elsa!” Anna burst out of the cave as well, dropping the axe she had been holding in a manner that was sure to get her a dressing down from Astrid later, and hit Elsa still almost at a run. Elsa staggered, but managed to catch her, and buried her face in Anna’s shoulder during the bone-crushing hug. “You’re all right. You’re all – what is that?”

She tugged at the shoulder of Elsa’s dress, which had slipped just far enough to reveal the glittering ice still on her underclothes. Elsa tugged it hastily back into place. “It is nothing,” she said. “We are fine. Though Toothless…”

“He’s coming to,” said Hiccup, straightening up again to join them. “I’ll check on the others in a minute. Ruffnut and Tuffnut are…” he glanced over at the twins, where Ruffnut was still looking wobbly-kneed and Tuffnut was letting his sister manhandle his arm around for him. “Eh, pretty much back to normal. But Elsa, I have to say,” he caught her eyes, and understood the flash of nervousness there but really wished that he did not, “that was amazing. You saved both of us back there.”

“Saved you? What happened?” said Anna, alarm in her voice.

“We’ll explain later,” said Hiccup, in what he hoped was a soothing tone. He did not want Toothless, Hookfang or Barf and Belch having to fly until morning, even without considering the rain. But Elsa did amazingly.”

It was worth it just to see Elsa look, if cautiously, proud. He would not explain to her that she had been the predator to predators this night, that she had made the Speed Stingers think that there was something that might be able to prey on them. He suspected that she would not understand it as such a compliment. It had been the only thing that had persuaded them to run, though, that they had feared her more than they had wanted Hiccup and Toothless, and with what Fishlegs had said about the venom stopping people’s breathing he could not help suspecting that Elsa had saved his life.

“I need to check the others,” he said, with a pat to Elsa’s shoulder. Snotlout was still standing awkwardly just inside the cave, mace in hand, although at least he appeared to have managed to stay dry. Stormfly was nestled half-in and half-out of the rain, and Hiccup was not surprised to find that Astrid was right beside her, still lying on her side and apparently asleep. Her breathing looked stronger, though, he hoped.

“Hey,” said Snotlout, as Hiccup drew closer. Hiccup nodded in return. “Is… Toothless all right?”

“He will be. How’s everyone doing?”

“’M fiiiine,” drawled Wartlout. Clueless made a noise that sounded rather like bleating. Well, that was heading for the stage the twins had been at not all that long ago. They were sitting up now, at least, propped against each other.

“You guys got stung once each, right?” said Hiccup.

Clueless nodded, head sort of bouncing in place. “Yuh,” said Wartlout.

But they were shorter than the twins, and Clueless at least had not started to build up even the muscle of dragonriding. Astrid, stung twice, was still out. He did not know how many times the dragons had been stung, but the Speed Stingers had seemed smart enough to know that they would need multiple blows to keep the larger dragons down. Worryingly smart, truth be told, but that was a discussion for another day.

“Anything from Hookfang, or Barf and Belch?” he asked Snotlout.

Snotlout shrugged. “Barf raised his head once. Kinda slammed into the ground again, though.”

“He slams his head pretty regularly. I don’t think it’ll do him any lasting damage,” said Hiccup. If Hookfang was not yet stirring, that might explain some of Snotlout’s shifting from foot to foot, and the way that he was now clinging to his mace, as well. Having Toothless down already felt too much like a missing limb, and he was already coming back as the scratch lost its limited effect. Hookfang had been out all day. “They’ll be fine. And now, so help me, we had better have the island to ourselves or I will…”

He was too tired to formulate even an entertaining threat, he realised as he groped vaguely for one. Exhaustion was rolling over him again, one night without sleep and one with little enough catching up with him.

“I will give them a very stern look,” he finished, giving up. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Gods help me, I need to sleep. Let’s set watches, and get this night over and done with.”

By this point, he didn’t really care if he was sleeping in the rain. All that he wanted was to put this island behind them, and get home once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, the second half of _Let it Go_.


	25. Chapter 25

He slept like the dead, having laid claim to the deepest, driest corner of the cave and propped himself against the wall, and woke up to someone kicking him in his good leg.

“Try th’other one,” he mumbled, without even opening his eyes. “It can go out without me.”

“Already did,” said Astrid. Hiccup’s eyes flew open just in time for her to drop the offending prosthetic into his lap. “It wasn’t very responsive.”

“You’re up,” he said, as if that was some sort of grand observation. Astrid raised an eyebrow at him, and Hiccup attempted to make himself look slightly more intelligent by actually putting on his foot. “I mean – how are you feeling?”

Astrid just shrugged, although the curl of her lip had more than an edge of distaste to it. “Glad to be on my feet again. It’s annoying to be able to hear everything and not react to it.”

Hiccup had a suspicion that _annoying_ was an understatement, but he did not comment and instead concentrated on putting his foot on as quickly as possible. Toothless was curled up against the wall, little more than a shadow among shadows until he opened his eyes and rumbled a greeting. With a chuckle, Hiccup ran a hand over Toothless’s brow and pushed himself upright, every muscle complaining. Astrid grabbed his arm midway through and dragged him the rest of the way, smirking at him when he almost stumbled into her.

“You sure you didn’t get stung last night?” she said.

There was no chance of a clever response, so Hiccup went for wagging his finger instead. “Ohhh, you think you’re being funny. Well, last night was not a picnic for anybody, let me tell you.”

“I heard,” said Astrid. She did not step out of the way to let him pass, but did keep smirking at him. “And let me say, you are going to _regret_ letting Snotlout carry me.”

At the words, Hiccup stopped, and looked guiltily in Astrid’s direction. She punched him in the shoulder, somewhat harder than usual and enough to knock him back a pace, and all that he could do was laugh sheepishly. “Everyone’s got to do their part…”

“Hiccup!” Anna’s voice from outside the cave was remarkably like a rescue, and Hiccup took the opportunity to flee the scene. It had stopped raining at some point in the night, though it remained overcast, and everyone else had apparently awoken before him and was milling around outside, the dragons also up and on their feet.

“Good morning, Anna,” he glanced around, “everyone…”

“We were going to let you sleep, but Astrid said we should wake you,” explained Fishlegs, as Anna grabbed Hiccup and hugged him again. He still wasn’t quite sure that he was used to being hugged on such a regular basis.

It was a bit embarrassing to realise that everyone else was already awake. “You… weren’t waiting for me, were you?”

“What? No!” said Fishlegs, quickly. Anna made a scoffing sound.

Snotlout leant out from behind Hookfang. “We were totally waiting for you.”

He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to thank Snotlout for at least being honest, or scowl at him for clearly trying to win some unspoken argument. It was not worth trying to work it out, however, and Hiccup just rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine. Just give me five minutes to stretch my legs before I have to start riding again, at least. How much packing up do we – you’ve already packed up.”

There was probably going to be some explaining to do when it came to the state of the tents, the food that had been destroyed, or even just the fact that they were coming back earlier than planned. But Hiccup had not originally noticed through the half a dozen extra Gronckles that what remained of their campsite had already been rolled up into bundles, even if those bundles were somewhat smaller than originally.

“Well, your new pets kept nosing around at things,” said Snotlout.

“They’re not _pets_ , Snotlout,” he replied, stifling a yawn. Gods, there was still sleep in his eyes. Hiccup pinched the bridge of his nose and cleared the corners of his eyes at the same time, before giving Snotlout what he hoped was a stern look. “And they were very important in getting the Speed Stingers back to their home island.”

Apparently not having a good reply, Snotlout made a vague mumbly sound that sounded suspiciously close to ‘they were very important in getting the Speed Stingers back to their home island’ and stepped back out of sight behind Hookfang. Hiccup rolled his eyes.

“With that truly incisive commentary,” said Hiccup. “If you’d excuse me.”

He patted one of the Gronckles on the flank in passing, and smiled as he heard a rustle of wings right behind him. Toothless chirped and rubbed his nose against Hiccup’s leg, but Hiccup did not stop walking until he was far enough into the trees to be sure that the others were out of sight.

In the light of the morning, he supposed that he should have gone back to the cave the night before, and checked again to make sure that all of the Speed Stingers were gone. At least a peaceful night indicated that was the case. Astrid was back on her feet, the dragons were all well again, and it was only his own lingering tiredness that was making him reluctant to get back in the saddle.

It had been so, so close to going so terribly wrong.

The thought made him feel cold despite the mild day, and he dropped to his knees so that he could wrap his arms around Toothless’s neck. He remembered again the terrible jolt when Toothless was hit, the scream that had ripped from the Night Fury. Now, Toothless rumbled so low that Hiccup could barely hear it, only feel it running through him.

“We’re going back, bud,” he said softly, forehead resting against Toothless’s shoulder. “We’re all going back.”

 

 

 

 

 

Despite a few attempts to wave them back, no fewer than three of the Gronckles apparently decided that they were determined to follow even as the group left the island. Speedifist was proudly on the back of one, which meant that Anna could ride with Astrid and there were now only two people on Meatlug’s back.

They were back before the middle of the day, to a somewhat confused crowd on the green. Hiccup had not exactly expected there to be a crowd at all, but he supposed that the completion of the first year of the Dragon Academy would be something of interest. Bracing himself, and squaring his shoulders, he landed and quickly dismounted, helping Clueless down and getting Toothless to the edge of the green so that the other dragons could come in to land behind them.

Speedifist was the first to land, waved down by Astrid and bringing her Gronckle in for a perfect, calm landing. She stumbled as she climbed down, but turned with a smile on her face that sent mutters going through the crowd. Her parents made their way to the front, and she ran to greet them, throwing herself first into a hug with her father, and then a second that squeezed her mother tightly. Hiccup glanced over to see that Clueless was already talking animatedly to his father Scattershot as well.

“Hiccup!” Stoick’s voice cut through the air as easily as any dragon call would have done, and Stoick pushed his way through as well. Though his face was stern, Hiccup was practised enough to see the uncertainty there as well. “You – you’re back. Is everything all right?”

“Yes,” said Hiccup, more confidently than he felt. “Everyone has done well, it’s just… much easier to plan for humans than it is for dragons.” As long as people didn’t pay too much attention to the fact that Astrid of all people was wearing long sleeves in the summer heat, they would probably be fine. “Although I was hoping for an opportunity to talk to everyone – and their parents,” he added, looking over at Clueless’s father who happened to be the closest. “Up in the Great Hall. And if you could be there… as Chief.” He looked more cautiously at his father, who nodded but had a look as if it were for lack of knowing what exactly to say.

As long as he kept this strictly under control, Hiccup told himself, it would be fine. Right now, that just meant making sure that the twins did not vanish somewhere.

He managed to gather everyone up, plus at least one parent for everyone other than Anna and Elsa, and ushered them in the general direction of the Great Hall. The female Nightmare met them there, and it may or may not have been Hiccup’s imagination that she gave him a very pointed look as the hatchlings flooded over. Meatlug’s young went straight to her, of course, and the Nadder hatchlings scurried around Stormfly in a multi-coloured flurry. Hiccup found himself with one of the Nightmares in his arms and not much idea of how it got there, and simply did his best to get everyone inside the Great Hall without anyone else following them.

It was Stoick’s holler that cleared out the hall for them. Hiccup aimed for one of the larger tables, vaguely waved for everyone to sit down, and put the Nightmare hatchling down onto the floor. Once Astrid had persuaded all of the dragons other than Toothless and some of the hatchlings to stay outside, she hauled one of the doors closed to make a point, and was the last one to join them at the table.

Hiccup did not sit down, even as Stoick bought over a chair and lowered himself down alongside the others. It still only really put Hiccup at eye-height on most of the adults. Wishing that his palms were not so damp with sweat, he looked around the table and was struck that there were more people than he had really anticipated there.

“Thank you, all,” he said, mostly looking to the adults. “As you all know, we were intending to spend longer in the field, several nights at least, to spend time with the dragons. Unfortunately, our plans did not quite work out.”

For a moment, he had to stop, feeling as if he needed to catch his breath even though there was no reason for it to quicken. Stoick was looking openly concerned.

“I wanted to tell you all immediately because I did not want this to come out in rumours or be poorly explained,” he continued. It had been the only answer that he could see, and he had told the others that there was to be a meeting as soon as they got back. “The first night that we were on the island, we were attacked by Speed Stingers.”

“ _What_?”

Hiccup was glad that he had understated the matter as Ghastlifist got sharply to his feet, and as both Cinder and Hallow started to protest on Wartihog’s behalf. At least Scattershot was remaining silent, probably waiting to see what else Hiccup had to say. Looking embarrassed, Speedifist grabbed her father’s arm and tried to tug him back down again, but it did not seem to be doing much for his temper.

“You’ll no’ be getting Speed Stingers this far south,” said Spitelout, with a wave of his hand. “Must have misidentified them.”

Fishlegs’s mother Alderspire had her hand on his arm, squeezing enough that her knuckles were turning white even if Fishlegs was not letting it show. “I thought that the island had been scouted and mapped,” she said, voice just about holding steady.

She sounded less angry than any of the others, and more concerned; it was that which made Hiccup feel guiltiest. “The Speed Stingers arrived after our last opportunity to scout the island. We couldn’t have anticipated their presence.”

“I’m telling you, lad;” Spitelout leant forwards on the table, as Snotlout cringed out of his sight. “It can’t have been Speed Stingers.”

“We’ve bought back a corpse if you want to look at it,” said Astrid sharply. Her words were enough to make Spitelout look round in surprise, and both of her parents were watching carefully rather than leaping in. She nodded towards the doors, where Barf and Belch were still sticking their heads into the building. “Or do you not trust us to identify it between eleven of us?”

“Astrid,” Hiccup said. She fell silent, albeit with a defiant look in his direction. “Spitelout, if you would like to examine the Speed Stinger, you are free to do so after this. However, for now I want to focus on the facts of what happened.”

It still surprised him more than a little when everyone actually did fall quiet again. Even if a score of people was far less than the entire village facing him at one of the village meetings, it still felt abruptly too many people. Half of them were from the academy, he reminded himself, and he had nothing to be worried about when it came to them.

“The Speed Stingers reached the island shortly before we arrived, but they were not able to leave by themselves. We got them back to their home island, where they won’t disturb or hurt the local dragons,” he added, before anyone took it upon themselves to ask why or how, “but given everything that had happened, we felt it was better if we returned to Berk. Also, the tents had been damaged,” he added, hearing his guilt seep into his voice.

“Was anybody hurt?” said Stoick, before anyone else could get a word in.

He had known that it was coming. He had known that it would be the first question from Stoick’s lips, and still Hiccup felt himself stumble on actually answering. His eyes fixed on the door ahead of him. The rush of panic that hit him was clearly visible from Stoick’s reaction, which was to stand up and lean in so that he was looking at the side of Hiccup’s face.

“I was stung,” said Astrid, breaking the silence. Eyes looked across to her. “Twice, actually, and as you can see, I’m fine.”

“Speed Stinger has been shown to not have any lasting effects,” Fishlegs offered. “As long as people don’t have a bad reaction straight away, it’s just a case of waiting for it to pass.”

“There were some stings,” Hiccup admitted. Again, the weight in his chest, the knowledge that he had taken them to this island where there had been danger waiting for them. But it would not do to go talking about anything like that, or trying to take the blame in front of everyone. “But, as Astrid says, she was the only one who was stung twice, and everyone was back on their feet quickly.

“I wanted to thank everyone, as well,” he pressed on, before he could lose momentum, “because we really couldn’t have done this without everyone’s contribution.”

It was a stretch of the truth, he knew. The twins, Astrid, Wartihog and Clueless had all been under the effects of the Speed Stingers’ venom for the entirety of what happened. If he was being generous – or if anyone asked – he would have said that it was their strength for handling the venom and not panicking or anything of that sort. And he did appreciate that. But mostly he was focusing on everyone working together for the way that it would sound to everyone they were trying to persuade.

“It took all of us to get the Speed Stingers back to their island. And in honesty… I think that might mean more than what we had planned. Everyone did well in the face of dragons, both the friendly ones and the Speed Stingers.” He looked from one of the trainees to the next, lingering longest on Speedifist. “And I’m proud to see that everyone completed their training. Or passed it. Or however we want to say it.”

The words had been going well until then.

There was a moment of disconcerted silence while everyone looked at each other, and Hiccup had no idea what to say. It was Clueless who leant in slightly, reaching up to scratch his ear and knocking his helmet askew as he did so.

“So… does this mean we’re adults now?” he said.

Hiccup looked to Stoick even as he tried to answer. “Yes?”

“The academy has replaced the arena,” said Stoick. He straightened up fully, and put a hand on Hiccup’s shoulder. Yup, definitely still heavy. “So yes. If Hiccup says that your training in the academy is complete, then yes, you are officially adults.”

“You’d think some sort of ceremony would be in order,” Spitelout said.

Narrowly resisting the temptation to glare and to ask whether Spitelout wanted to make a production out of everything in existence, Hiccup still narrowed his eyes. Learning to live with the dragons was not about spectacle and showing off; it was something _in_ them, heart and mind and understanding rather than some show of brawn. Even when they were in a group, it was something _personal_.

But he became aware of muttering around the table, and as he glanced around saw Speedifist looking at him hopefully, and the twins and Fishlegs looking equally excited. Every year, there had been a celebration of the new group joining the ranks of adulthood, until last autumn when the Red Death and its fallout had made them adults too quickly and too violently, more violently even than was usual with the death of one dragon alone.

Living with dragons might have been personal, but the sense of community was not. And if this was to replace the arena, then it was to become a sort of welcome to Berk’s community.

“You’re right,” he said. It earnt him a few looks of surprise. “There should be a celebration for this. Recognition.” With Phlegma not present to ask, he looked to his father. “Are the stores fit for a feast?”

“Well – yes,” said Stoick, sounding only a little as if Hiccup had completely caught him on the hop. Which, Hiccup suspected, would be a completely valid assessment. “That can be arranged. Perhaps tomorrow, though, to give people some time to settle back here again.”

“Sounds perfect,” said Hiccup, a little quicker than he intended but hopefully with a steady enough expression to get away with it. “A celebration definitely sounds in order.”

 

 

 

 

 

The new Gronckles seemed comfortable enough bedding down in the academy, taking over pens that had been long left empty. Speedifist insisted on bringing her parents to introduce them to the Gronckle she had flown back with, which Hiccup suspected was going to get named before too long. Once everyone had been and gone, and he had received a surprising number of hugs from trainees – well, former trainees, he supposed – and parents alike, he sank to the floor next to Toothless, too tired to even bother walking back for the moment.

“Next year can’t be worse than that, at least, right?” he said. Toothless huffed. “Yeah, all right, stupid question.”

He scratched just behind Toothless’s flaps, searching for the spot that made them shiver. The Speed Stingers felt a very long way away now, but he knew that everyone who had been stung still had the mark written on their skin.

He’d always tried to ensure that he only endangered _himself_. That was a risk, and he could decide to take it. It was not fair to ask that of anyone else, let alone to foist it on them without any warning. His hands slowed, then stilled, and a cold weight slid down his throat at the thought that the others could have been hurt – could have been _killed_ , the guilt whispered, but he did his best to push that away. It was hard, though, with the memory of the Terrible Terrors strewn bloody across the clearing. Only on Astrid had blood been drawn, but even on one person it was too much.

“Hiccup!”

Anna’s voice pulled him from his thoughts, and he looked up to see the inevitable sight of Anna and Elsa side by side as they entered the academy. The little Terror that she had rescued was perched on her chest still, but this time half-in and half-out of her shirt, looking around. Even just water and some scraps of food seemed to have done well for it.

“Hey, guys,” he said. His voice came out more tired than he was expecting. “Sorry I abandoned you in the village. Had to get these guys over here.”

He pointed to the three Gronckles currently in the pen that had once belonged to Hookfang. Two of them were sleeping, slumped against each other, while the third was sniffing every inch of the ground.

“It’s fine,” said Anna, with a shrug that nearly dislodged the Terror. She flopped down beside Hiccup, slumping in place and stretching out her legs. “We headed home. Dropped off the bedrolls. Elsa was telling me about the ice bridge on the way over here, but something tells me that she wasn’t letting it sound as impressive as it really was.”

A wry smile crossed Elsa’s face as she knelt down just in front of Toothless, resting a hand on his nose. “It was not that impressive,” she said.

Hiccup blew a raspberry. “It was very impressive. Ask me about it when I have more power over language.”

“You are tired?” said Elsa gently.

“You have probably only slept as much as I have!” he retorted. “Or less! How are you still walking in a straight line?”

“Anna props me up,” she replied, without even a flicker of a smile.

Scoffing, Hiccup stretched out his good leg, then crossed his right ankle of his leg. “Well,” he said, looking back to Anna, “while I am sure that Elsa told the truth, I suspect that she will have left out some of the details. I will tell you… tomorrow, probably. At this celebration I’ve agreed to.”

“So I officially get to be an adult here?” said Anna, pausing in stroking the Terrible Terror along its nose. “I mean, it’s kind of earlier than I was expecting, but…” she trailed off with a nervous chuckle.

“Well, if you’re living here, for now, then I guess so,” Hiccup said. “Though if anyone has been acting weird it’ll be because you’re from Arendelle, not for your age,” he added, as she grimaced. “Everyone’s still… getting their head around it, I guess.”

He was still searching for words when the sound of the horn cut through the air. Anna jumped so sharply she fell sideways onto her elbow, alarm on her face for the moment before she recognised it, even as Hiccup was trying to clamber to his feet despite his leaden limbs.

One long blast gave way to two short ones, then a long pause. “Unidentified boat,” said Hiccup. The sky was still too bright for him to take to the air with Toothless and check it out, though. He was just wondering whether Astrid, above the thin clouds, might fair better, when the horn sounded again. Short long short, a pause, and then the repeat. “No, let’s try again, friendly boat. We aren’t expecting anyone around this time of year, I wouldn’t have taken the academy straight over the sailing current if we were.”

Johann would not be around for another moon, and it was unlikely that he would have changed his boat so much as to be unrecognisable. He had too much of a love for his sails. But given what had happened so far that summer, Hiccup had an uncomfortable feeling that he knew where this this boat came from.

“We should probably head home,” he said, extending a hand to pull Anna up. “Whatever it is, my father might want to talk to me about it.”

It was, after all, the truth. Just not all of what he suspected. It saddened him a little that Anna did not even seem to be suspicious of him, although it was harder to tell from Elsa’s calm expression whether she had her concerns or not.

“Oh,” said Anna, brushing dust off her leggings, “and that Kristoff guy is in your woodshed again. Gobber said they hadn’t had much success getting him indoors. And then he said that he was waiting for you to get back. ‘He’ Kristoff, I mean, not ‘he’ Gobber.”

“Thank you,” Hiccup said, before Anna could get herself too linguistically tangled. Having not seen Kristoff for over a moon, Hiccup was more than a little curious about what had bought him back now, and what had kept him away for so long in the first place.

Toothless followed close behind them as they made their way along the path back to the village, with Anna muttering and cooing to the Terror still in her shirt.

“You know, you never did explain,” he said to Elsa, “exactly how you got out there that quickly yesterday. Everyone else was a long way behind you.”

Rubbing her hands, Elsa gave a sheepish smile. “While you were in the trees – you went back and forth a lot. I went straight to the north coast, to check on the ice bridge. The rain.” She shrugged.

That made a lot of sense, he had to admit, and had put aside any alarming ideas of a particularly high-speed Gronckle. “Well, thank you for that as well, then,” said Hiccup. “I probably would have been trying to hold off the Speed Stingers with my _knife_ or something…” he shook his head. “You’re just lucky that Snotlout wasn’t there to see you take your dress off. Twice.”

Anna yelped, and looked round with wide eyes, and Hiccup bit the inside of his lip to keep a straight face as Elsa gave him the closest thing he had ever seen her come to a withering look. It was so unexpected that it made it all the funnier, and almost pushed away thoughts of the boat down on the wharves.

“I like that dress,” she said, though Hiccup suspected that it was mostly to give an answer to Anna before her eyes popped out of her head. “I worked on it for many days. I do not want the ice to…” she waved a hand vaguely.

She had said that the first time as well, of course. “I’m still impressed that you could think of your dress,” he said. “I could not have been that sensible right then.”

“So, wait, he still hasn’t seen you naked, has he?” said Anna.

This time, it was Elsa’s turn to look bewildered, and Hiccup gave up and laughed at the confusion back and forth between the two of them. “Early on,” he managed between laughter, “Anna said about a scar on your upper arm, and I said that I hadn’t known about it. And she said it was good, because it meant I hadn’t seen you naked. And no, Anna, she was still wearing her underclothes. Getting _those_ off while jumping off a Gronckle would be impressive, to say the least…”

“Well, _I_ am going to stick with my leggings, thank you very much,” said Anna, “because I am bad enough at remembering my belt or whatever, so I definitely don’t need clothes that fall off _more_ easily.”

“You know, I think my father would actually have my guts for this conversation.”

“You should see if Gobber has any silk left,” said Elsa, in just the right mild tone for Hiccup, starting to gather himself, to laugh again.

“Silk? On Berk? We hardly got that in Arendelle!” said Anna.

“Yeah, and when they first got washed, they looked like Coronan purple,” said Hiccup. “Then a few washes later, suddenly it’s more rose pink. So my suspicion would be that Johann was trying to get rid of badly-dyed silk because he found out it was badly-dyed, and knew that Gobber wouldn’t care so long as it was silk.” Gobber had been confused during the first wash, but resigned by the second. “Though I did not much appreciate the pale pink shirt. Gobber’s skivvies have been relegated to being washed by themselves these days.”

“Skivvies?” said Anna.

“Und – have you seriously been here this long without hearing the word skivvies?” Hiccup said. He grabbed one of Anna’s braids and lifted it up, pretending to look into her ear. “Are you really the Anna living in the same house as Gobber, or has one of the twins learnt enough seiðr to shapeshift?”

Anna punched him in the shoulder, which was at least proof that she was not the twins, even if it also suggested that she had been taking punching lessons from Astrid.

“Underwear. Under _pants_ ,” he specified, with a gesture below waist-height that was almost certainly unnecessary. “Although considering I hear the word in his voice in my head, it may not be one that anyone other than Gobber uses…”

 

 

 

 

 

By the time that they got back to the house, Hiccup was trying to recall some of the more unusual curses he had heard Gobber use over the years, purely for the entertainment value of some of them. After a brief divergence to explain the word nipple, which Anna had apparently not come across before and which sadly did have the potential to be a useful word in any social circle that included Ruffnut, he was trying to remember exactly how many things Gobber had called his hands when the rope started smouldering and occasionally dropped the prosthetic altogether.

“And then there’s – I mean, there’s plenty of variations on bucket, you’d be amazed how much mileage you can get out of it.”

“Seriously?” said Anna.

Hiccup nodded. “Oh, yeah. If you’ve never heard it said that someone has a gob like a tin bucket of bees, you have to see Gobber get annoyed with someone. I mean, other than his own supposed appendages.”

“Yeah, the trollwort still grows well,” said Kristoff, from inside the woodshed. Hiccup stopped in his attempt to repeat Gobber’s words, and looked round curiously. “They say it’s the water there. It’s pure rainwater that feeds it, not springs.” There was a long pause. “It’s not got many uses other than the magic, to be honest. But I can see if they’ll let me bring some.” Another pause. “Eh… I’m not sure that cuttings would take in the soil around here.”

“Kristoff?” Hiccup sped up to reach the woodshed. “Are you all – ah…”

Kristoff was sitting against the wall, hat off and in a light shirt compared to the tunic he had worn before, while Gothi sat opposite him on an upturned bucket with her sand-strewn calfskin beside her. At the back of the woodshed, Thornado was asleep with Sven half draped over him.

“Hi, Kristoff,” said Hiccup.

A look of guilt flashed across Kristoff’s face, one which Hiccup could not help but find somewhat disconcerting on the man who had been so confident with them earlier. Gothi, of course, would not have any such expression, and Hiccup did not even both looking for it as he nodded to her.

“Gothi. Everything all right?”

Sweeping her sand clean, Gothi wrote out a few of her symbols. There was a long moment of silence, and then she clipped Kristoff’s upper arm with the end of her staff, frowning at him pointedly.

“Ow! Yeah, we were just talking about… my family,” said Kristoff, gruff reticence rolling back over him again. He shifted, bringing his shoulders forwards and closing off his frame. “Waiting for you and your father to get back. Thought you were with him.”

“No, we were tidying things up at the academy,” said Hiccup, with a vague gesture in what might have been the wrong direction. It was unlikely that Kristoff noticed anyway. “Have to see where the ship is from. How long have you been waiting?”

“We got here yesterday,” said Kristoff.

Well, at least the woodshed was comfortably big enough to sleep in now, and it would have kept the worst of the rain out. Hiccup would have to say that he approved of Kristoff’s willingness to share with Thornado, though, at the very least.

“Yeah, did something come up?” Crossing his arms, Hiccup leant in the doorway. “We got worried when you were away so long.”

“Well, that’s what I needed to talk to your father about, as well,” Kristoff said, temper getting audibly shorter.

Sensing that the conversation was coming pretty close to an end, Hiccup turned his attention to Gothi instead, who was watching them closely with the slightest hint of a smile. “Everything going well with you, Gothi?”

Of course, when she wrote something out, he should have appreciated that Kristoff would have to be the one to read it aloud. Hiccup cursed himself.

“She says she prefers the weather like this. Though she thought she felt a cold wind from the north last night.”

“That spire of yours tells you all sorts of secrets, doesn’t it?” said Hiccup. He could not look around to Elsa, could not draw attention to her when she might not want it, but he felt the pang in his chest all the same. Gothi smirked, and nodded. “Well, Berk’s weather is its own beast. Hey, Kristoff, you want to join us for something to eat?” Elsa had done well finding them something while they were on the island, but after the Speed Stingers had wiped out their supplies it had needed to go a long way.

It was not that much of a surprise when Kristoff shook his head, however. “I’ll wait out here for your father.”

Hiccup shrugged, as if to suggest it was Kristoff’s loss, then peeled upright and nodded for Anna and Elsa to follow him into the house instead. There was a pinched line between Elsa’s brows, but she did not say anything as she held the door open for Toothless and then let it close gently behind them.

Between the three of them, they managed to find something that resembled food, and just a fresh apple tasted amazing when Hiccup snuck bites of one between putting together actual vegetable soup. Anna had no experience in cooking from her previous life in Arendelle, but she was curious and picking things up quickly, and Elsa was more than happy to do the explaining for Hiccup. If he was honest, she was probably doing a better job of explaining it anyway.

He was cursing his way around the pantry, trying to see if their masher had made it into there since it was not apparent elsewhere, when he heard the door open again. That had to be Stoick. Hiccup stuck his head out of the pantry again just in time to see his father, scowling, close the door heavily behind him.

“Dad?”

“Hiccup?” The scowl faded a little, but did not leave altogether. Stoick strode over to the table, and without being asked Hiccup drifted to join him. “You’re all home. Good. Sit down. Where is Kristoff?”

“He’s out in the woodshed, said that he’d come in when you…” Hiccup trailed off at the knock at the door, then cupped a hand around his mouth. “Kristoff, if that’s you, come on in.”

The door opened slowly, and Kristoff gave the scene a cautious look before stepping inside. At least the reindeer did not join him; unlike Toothless, he could not perch in the rafters out of the way. “Chief Stoick,” he said first, with a bow of his head. “Hiccup.”

It was Elsa who remembered to take the vegetables away from the fire, before joining Anna at the table. She did not sit, though, but stood with a hand on her sister’s shoulder.

“Kristoff, join us,” said Stoick. “I think I might have an idea of your message.”

“I wanted to make sure that Hiccup was here as well–”

Stoick waved off the comment, presumably ignoring the air of excuse about it. “I understand. Anna, the boat that just docked was from Arendelle.”

“ _What_?” her eyes widened, and she rose half-way to her feet again before Elsa’s hand checked her.

“It was under plain sails,” said Stoick. His words were terse and fast, and that worried Hiccup more than anything else. “Lord Kragen was on board. He had two copies of the treaty,” Stoick laid down a scroll on the table, with Arendelle’s official seal in dark green wax, “signed by the Queen.”

“That’s impossible–” Anna began.

“He asked for me to sign them there, and witness their sealing. I could not very well refuse,” said Stoick. Anger roughened his voice, and his left hand curled into a fist at his side, but he kept his eyes steady on Anna. “He sailed immediately, on the sunwise currents.”

All of the colour had drained from Anna’s face, leaving her freckles stark against her skin. She sank back into her seat again, hands tightening on the edge of the table.

Kristoff cleared his throat uncomfortable. “That fits with the news from Arendelle,” he said. “The official story is that the Queen has returned to isolation, after what happened with the wildling. I mean, with–”

“That’s not what happened,” said Anna. Though she was still pale, anger was starting to build in her eyes, the muscles in her arms tightening and her brow becoming set. “They are lying to my people. They are _using my name_.”

“Prince Hans is still imprisoned,” said Kristoff. “They say his betrayal is part of it.” His pause was nervous, as he licked his lips, but everyone’s eyes remained fixed upon him. “There is a crackdown on magic. Rumours of it, stories of it. The ice harvesters are barely being allowed into the city – and as far as the Silver Priests know, _they_ worship the Mothers and Fathers. Weselton and his men are still there, adding muscle to Arendelle’s guard.”

To judge by the look of horror on Stoick’s face, that was news to him as well. Anna breathed hard through her nose, but Hiccup could hear the wobble in it, the slightest unsteadiness that suggested her anger was more fragile than it looked. He stepped across to her and sat on the bench at her left hand, astride so that he could face her.

“Anna, whatever happens, _we will sort this_ ,” he said.

Her voice came out sharp, words bitten. “They say I have returned to my cage, they rule in my name, and they let Weaseltown on my streets. After banishing my sister for magic, they try to say that _I_ want magic stamped out?”

“Pretty much,” said Kristoff.

Stoick looked down at the scroll again. “From what you have said of what happened, they may think you dead. Who was the next in line to your throne?”

Finally huffing out her breath, Anna shook her head and shrugged with a wave of her arms. “I don’t know! Our father was an only child, our grandfather’s sister never married! My great-grandmother…” she grimaced.

“Here.” Hiccup grabbed a slate from beneath the table and put it in front of her. Anna’s hand was shaking as she picked it up and started sketching out lines.

“My great-grandmother’s sister – no, her son died in the wars and her daughter never had children. Before that was, _parlenks_ , King Haakon, he was one of five. We haven’t kept much track of the branches.” She looked up at Stoick, shaking her head. “They married off into other families. Arendelle has the first child succeed, but some of the other Kingdoms go for the first son. There’ll be arguments over who my heir is.”

“Which might be why they’ve decided it’s easier to let people think you’ve gone behind walls,” said Stoick.

Kristoff folded his arms. “Imaginary Queens? Must be easy to get them to do as the Silver Priests say.”

“That as well,” said Stoick, even as muscles twitched in Anna’s jaw.

“I need to go back,” she said. “Disprove them.”

“Really?” Kristoff looked unimpressed. “You’re a peasant girl with a vague resemblance, but you’re not the Queen. You don’t even have the right hair.”

“How dare–”

“That _is_ what they’ll say,” said Stoick, cutting off any brewing fight. “They have done this for a reason, there is no doubt of that, and I suspect that Kristoff is right. If they rule in your name, they can do as they wish and claim your authority. If you attempt to challenge that, I have no doubt that they will respond with anger, and possibly with force.”

“Then what do we do?” said Elsa, quietly. She had not spoken until that moment, watching the sway and flow of the words around her.

Anna reached up, searching blindly for Elsa’s hand on her shoulder. “If I go back…” she said slowly. “They’ll attack me, won’t they?”

“Most likely,” said Stoick.

“And if I stay here, they use my name.”

“Definitely,” said Kristoff.

Her teeth clenched, but the muscles in her jaw were twitching as her eyes remained fixed on Stoick. Hiccup wished that he could give her an answer, that something would spring to mind in the way that it had when he was faced with the Speed Stingers.

He could almost see her weighing it all. A challenge now would risk everything, her life, the lives of those around her. It could mean war, or a swift and brutal execution. They had no plan for how she could win. But if she remained in Berk, she left Arendelle to the dubiously tender mercies of the Silver Priests, and whatever they might want to wreak upon it.

“I don’t know what to do,” Anna admitted, voice cracking. She swallowed hard and blinked fast, and her hand tightened on Elsa’s. “They… they’ve banished me, haven’t they? As much as they did Elsa.” A tearful glance at her sister; pain flashed across Elsa’s face in turn. “They… I want to say they can’t do this, but they _have_ ,” her voice turned bitter. “They’ve banished me from my own Kingdom, and I _don’t know what to do_.”

“You’re welcome here,” said Stoick. “For as long as you need, you are welcome here.”

“This might not be a battle you can fight,” Kristoff said grimly.

Anna bared her teeth. “ _Yet_. I’ll come for them, one day. But… not yet. It can’t be yet.”

She deflated again, and Hiccup shuffled a little closer to her. “Berk is behind you. Right, Dad?” He looked round, more certain than hoping that Stoick would back him up but realising with a guilty lurch that he should have let Stoick make the offer.

“Sword and shield,” said Stoick.

Toothless rumbled from above them, flicking his tail. “And dragon, as well,” Hiccup added.

“I’m here,” said Elsa.

“I’ll return for them,” said Anna, her eyes falling to the sealed scroll that sat on the table between them all, the scroll that had bought it to this. “When I have the knowledge, when I have the strength… I’ll return for them. And even until then,” she looked at Kristoff, hard and certain, “I want to know what’s going on there. If they’re mistreating my people…”

“All right, all right!” he held up his hands. “I’ll keep an eye, play messenger. And for what it’s worth,” he added, tone growing more serious, “the trolls will do what they can. They’ve heard about the Silver Priests, and they don’t care for them. The ice harvesters, they’d rather keep to themselves,” an awkward shrug, and the tell of words beneath the surface, “but they won’t support the Priests. I’ll say that much.”

“You’re not alone, Anna,” said Stoick. “Whatever happens.”

“I know. And I thank you for it.” Anna dropped her hand off Elsa’s, but reached across to put a hand on Hiccup’s shoulder instead. “It’s been a long summer. But... you've all been there for me. And after all this time, I can’t express how much that means to me. I’ll do what I can to have your backs, as well.”

“And now – or, I guess, after the party tomorrow – you’re an official adult in Berk.” Hiccup punched her in the arm. “So… welcome, I guess.”

At least it made Anna laugh, for all that there was an edge of desperation in her voice.

“We’ve got a few flaws. It’s kind of noisy, kind of smelly,” he continued, “and honestly, at our height it’s difficult to see where you’re going in a crowd sometimes. But,” he took Anna’s hand, “the people are loyal, life is never boring, and we… round each other out. And you might not be able to change us, but you’d be surprised and just what good we _can_ do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nerdy note: _Kragen_ is the Danish word for crow, after the crow who feeds Gerda the wrong information in _Sneedronningen_.
> 
> So, that happened. Anna is staying in Arendelle, at least for the time being - turns out that three teenagers and a dragon aren't quite fit to take on a city, and even Berk will struggle when Arendelle is about ten times its size and has the possibility of drawing in allies from elsewhere. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has been with me for this insane rollercoaster ride of a fic, and I hope that I have entertained you well enough to have been worth the time!
> 
> For those who are looking for more, there's some lightweight [Outtakes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11007150/) that go around or after this arc, or the considerable less lightweight [How to Walk in Lightning](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11007102) which will be our next main fic in the series.


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